George Morland 



the good is oft interred with their bones." So has it been with 

 Morland, and the grossness of his habits has been remembered, 

 whereas the kindness of his heart has been forgotten. In bringing 

 this brief account to a close, let us rather think of the way in which 

 he loved animals and little children, of his broad-hearted generosity 

 to all poor devils in misfortune, of his infinite capacity for friendship 

 and good fellowship, of his extraordinary industry, and of his 

 irresistible charm of manner. His work is a splendid possession in 

 the national heritage of Art, and his pictures of English rural and 

 domestic life in the eighteenth century have immortalised his 

 memory. 



A NOTE UPON MORLAND ENGRAVINGS. 



BY MARTIN HARDIE. Prom The Connoisseur, August, 1904. 



AOREAT painter though Morland was, he owes his real popularity to the 

 engravings which hare so admirably interpreted his work. If you hear 

 anyone speak with admiration of Morland as a painter, and ask point- 

 blank how many of the artist's pictures the speaker knows, you will find almost 

 invariably that his appreciation depends on his knowledge of the engravings by 

 Ward, Smith, and others, with just a vague remembrance of the National Gallery 

 Farmer's Stable to supply a background of real colour. As Sir Joshua Reynolds 

 remarked of McArdell and his fellows, so Morland might well have said of William 

 Ward and John Raphael Smith, "By these I shall be immortalised." 



Even during his lifetime it was by the prints after his pictures that Morland 

 attained to fame. It is hard to say whether he was pestered most by dealers or by 

 bailiffs. Much of his work was executed on the "while you wait" system, and he 

 was constantly beset by dealers, who would hurry off, taking a canvas still wet, to be 

 instantly translated into stipple or mezzotint. The five years, 1788 to 1792, alone saw 

 the appearance of over a hundred engravings after his work, and during his lifetime 

 over two hundred and fifty separate prints were issued. It forms a record that 

 probably Turner alone has surpassed. The grand total now would be difficult to 

 reckon, for the present writer has a list of over eighty engravers who have inter- 

 preted Morland's pictures in mezzotint, stipple, etching, and aquatint; and some of 

 them are responsible for a dozen or two dozen subjects apiece. 



It is interesting to note among these engravers the name of William Blake, who 

 in 1803 engraved The Industrious Cottager and The Idle Laundress. It is interesting 

 also to remember that when the commission was given to Blake by Linnell for the 

 illustrations of the Book of Job, the poverty-stricken poet and mystic was on the 

 point of spending his last years in engraving a set of Morland's " Pig and Poultry 

 Subjects." 



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