The Countryman's Criticism on the Pigs in Gainsborough's Picture of the Girl and Pigs.
Thomas Gainsborough, the great English painter, exhibited, in 1782, among pictures of noblemen, gentlemen, and ladies, his well-known "Girl and Pigs."[208]
Wolcot, better known as "Peter Pindar," in his first "Ode to the Royal Academicians," refers to this picture.
"And now, O Muse, with song so big,
Turn round to Gainsborough's Girl and Pig,
Or Pig and Girl, I rather should have said;
The pig in white, I must allow,
Is really a well painted sow,
I wish to say the same thing of the maid."
"The expression and truth of nature in the Girl and Pigs," remarks Northcote, "were never surpassed. Sir Joshua Reynolds was struck with it, though he thought Gainsborough ought to have made her a beauty." Reynolds, indeed, became the purchaser of the painting at one hundred guineas, Gainsborough asking but sixty. During its exhibition, it is said to have attracted the attention of a countryman, who remarked—"They be deadly like pigs, but nobody ever saw pigs feeding together but what one on 'em had a foot in the trough."