قراءة كتاب George Morland: Sixteen examples in colour of the artist's work
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George Morland: Sixteen examples in colour of the artist's work
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.
