Lot Essay
One of the most popular artists of his day, George Morland was the son of Henry Robert Morland, an artist and picture dealer. His precocious talent developed rapidly and at the age of ten, he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy and The Royal Society of Artists. By 1787, he had established a reputation for small, elegant and sentimental genre scenes and by the 1790s, he had begun to produce larger, more ambitious rustic scenes including sporting subjects.