He and his wife were unhappy together and miserable apart. When he had a home she shared it, and if he had not, he sent her money—when he could. That he inspired her to the utmost with the affection he was able to engage from all who came in contact with him, is proved by the fact that news of his death killed her.
Morland's art embraced great variety of subjects. His earlier popular successes were achieved by his figure paintings, and of these it is worth noticing that among the best were pictures which pointed morals he studiously ignored in his own career. The great popularity of W. R. Bigg's pictures of child-life led the dealers to persuade Morland to take up the same line of work, and in his pictures of child-life the artist shows himself what we know him to have been—a lover of children and one who had perfect understanding of them. The insight with which he portrayed children is only equalled by that which distinguishes his animal paintings. Morland's horses, ponies, asses, calves, and pigs, are entirely his own; they possess a character which stamps them as the work of one who had almost uncanny knowledge. He rarely painted a well-bred horse; the animal that appealed to him was the farmer's work-horse or the slave of the carter, and on these he expended his greatest skill. Only an artist who was also a horseman could paint the horse as he painted it. He has been described as a "pig painter," but this refers rather to the success with which he proved the artistic possibilities of subjects so unpromising than to the number of works in which pigs occur, though it is admitted that he was fond of painting such pictures. His asses and calves, in their kind, are equal to his horses; cows he seldom painted, and when he essayed to do sheep he was not conspicuously successful.
The composition of his works is rarely otherwise than pleasing, a point the more worthy of notice when we remember that he never made studies, but developed the picture under his hand as he worked upon it. The straightforward simplicity, the absence of subtlety of his art, may perhaps be in some measure an outcome of his method. His schemes of colouring were subdued rather than brilliant; one of his few principles of painting was that a touch of pure red should appear in every picture, and we very generally find it.
Once Morland left his father's roof, his artistic education in one sense ceased. He took not the slightest interest in the works of other painters of whatever period; on the contrary, he avoided study of art lest he should become an imitator; and went direct to Nature for all he required. To this practice we may attribute his originality.
Since I had the pleasure of collaborating with Sir Walter Gilbey in writing the biography of the painter, it has been pointed out that the artist with whom George Morland has more in common than any is Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779). The resemblance between the figure subjects in which each excelled is certainly striking; and this resemblance, regarded in conjunction with the French nationality of Morland's mother, has evoked the suggestion that the English painter may have derived hereditary talent from the maternal side. Search through the registers of the churches of the parish in which Henry Robert Morland lived fails to reveal entry relating to his marriage. It may be recalled, however, that Chardin's two daughters died in infancy.
E. D. CUMING.
Idleness