Statistics and owls

Went to an interesting RSS talk last night. The location of these talks is a rather lovely Georgian town house in the New Town. There are quite a lot of portraits of famous mathematicians and scientists on the walls, but I've never noticed before the rather lovely pencil (?) drawing by William Dyce of James Clerk Maxwell as a child, apparently embracing a large owl. I find it a rather compelling image: the young scientist embraces wisdom. Or am I just overloading it, and it's a piece of pure whimsy? I'd love to know more. My main knowledge of Dyce is as the painter of a version of Christ in the wilderness, where the landscape used is very clearly Scottish.