This delicate study of an elderly man reading his family Bible in a cottage interior was Davis’s first exhibited picture at the Royal Academy in 1854 (along with a death bed subject titled Parting Words). It was picked out in Punch magazine by Tom Taylor, later the art critic for The Times, in his column ‘Punch Amongst the Pictures’: ‘It is called Meditation, and represents an old villager, with a six days beard, sitting by a lonely fireside, the light falling warm on a face gently saddened with old memories. You may build a simple life story out of that face, but I defy you to look at it and not see that the painter had some such story in his mind. The painting too, has all befitting technical merits to set off the homely pathos of the old man’s gaze; and if any kind friend were to offer me my choice between this two-foot canvas and some more ambitious work not very far off, I know which I should choose.’ Tom Taylor, when he referred to the fireside in the picture as ‘lonely’, had presumably not noticed the discarded bonnet under the chair with a prayer book on it, to the right. Davis lived with his parents; his father John, a tailor and draper, was 71 in 1854 and we suppose this to be his father’s portrait, with his mother Mary and sister Harriett (51 and 29) out of the picture. Although their circumstances seem humble, the house is clean, they could afford both a servant and to have sent their son to the Worcester School of Design, and then to Birmingham.

Other contemporary reviewers also noticed the picture in 1854: ‘Verily this young gentleman’s first season in the art world will be the making of him. The Spectator also predicts that the name of E Davis will be soon known to all who can appreciate quiet unaffected sentiment and honest painting’ (Worcestershire Chronicle). Years later, Davis’s obituary in the Worcester Journal pointed out that ‘This was the highest praise any young painter could even hope for in his first year. It brought him at once into notice, and future works were looked for with eager expectation.’