A Biographical Sketch 



the familiarity with which he treated the " low, vulgar characters" 

 with whom he was hail-fellow-well-met. But, as he had set out to 

 paint rural comedies and scenes of English peasant and sporting 

 life, he naturally required models of that kind — unlike his father, 

 who, with an artistic insincerity, painted fashionable ladies as dairy- 

 maids and laundresses. There is always a suggestion of contempt 

 and almost of indignation in the contemporary accounts of Morland's 

 life at the idea of an English gentleman being mixed up with " the 

 vulgar herd," but the truth is that this feeling of caste was very 

 strong in the eighteenth century, and his biographers failed to 

 understand the necessities of his art and the democratic nature of 

 his temperament. It is with evident amazement that Dawe tells 

 the story of how he fell in with a sergeant, drummer, and private 

 soldier, who were on their way to arrest a deserter, and entertained 

 them for a night at his house with as much drink as they could 

 absorb. But it was not merely for the purposes of a carouse that 

 Morland behaved in this way. He put a thousand questions to the 

 soldiers and made a number of sketches, which resulted afterwards 

 in his fine picture of "The Deserter." 



If his private reputation suffered, his art gained also by his 

 familiarity with the drivers of the Hampstead and Highgate 

 coaches, with their ostlers and stable-boys, and with the wagoners, 

 horse-dealers, jockeys, prize-fighters, and yokels who took 

 refreshment and enjoyed the conviviality of the taprooms at the 

 inns within a ten mile radius of his house at Camden Town. Even 

 if his pencil was not busy, his vivid brain was recording a thousand 

 impressions which afterwards were used in such pictures as "The 

 Interior of an Ale-house," " The Ale-house Politicians," and " The 

 Amorous Ploughman." 



With his immense fund of high spirits, his rollicking humour, 

 and his lavish generosity, Morland was the most popular 

 character on the coaching roads, and could have ridden on any 

 stage-coach in the kingdom with the prerogative of a man who had 

 " the freedom of the whip." As he spent his money faster than he 

 earned it, and was always ready to give a guinea to any poor 

 devil who tramped the highway, or a free meal and drink to any 

 rogue or vagabond with an empty stomach, he was naturally 



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