George Morland 



with a snuff-box in ladies' salons, he preferred the society of the 

 stable, the joviality of the inn-parlour, and the natural scents of 

 the country lane. For his own sake it would have been better if 

 he had taken his place among cultured men and women, but English 

 art has gained much because of his boorishness and democratic 

 tastes. In his pictures we are able to see very clearly what 

 English country life was like in the days of George III., before the 

 modern age had destroyed the picturesqueness of our peasantry, 

 and a good deal of the old joyousness and rural prosperity. True, 

 the habits and customs of the countryfolk were somewhat coarse 

 and more uncouth than now ; it was an age of hard drinking, of 

 rough horseplay, of cock-fighting and bull-baiting. But on the 

 whole Morland's pictures are charming in their rural simplicity, 

 though never sacrificing truth to sentiment. 



This at least may be recorded to his honour, that, in spite of his 

 own lax morality and intemperate habits, he did not degrade his 

 trust by expressing what was vile and objectionable. Influenced as 

 he undoubtedly was by Dutch art, his pictures do not contain 

 such wanton and ugly vulgarity as sometimes marred the work of 

 the Dutch painters of village life, and they leave one with a feeling 

 of affection for the brighter and best side of the old English 

 countryside. 



As a figure painter Morland has been much underrated. There 

 is no doubt that had he been only a portrait painter he would have 

 rivalled Romney himself. As it is, one's imagination is charmed by 

 the types of sweet English womanhood which he has left us in such 

 pictures as the " Letitia " series, for which it is believed his wife 

 was the model. 



As the painter of English child life, again, he deserves special 

 honour. It is a pleasant thing to remember the many rosy-cheeked 

 boys and girls whose faces still smile at us from the eighteenth 

 century, whom with sorrow and pleasure, and merry games, he 

 depicted with such sympathy and evident affection. Those tall slim 

 youngsters with the long fair hair and the frilled collars, the short 

 cut-away jackets, and the tight little trousers, and the little round- 

 eyed girls in little soft white blouses high in the waist, were the 

 great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers of some of us ; and as 



