George Morland: Sixteen examples in colour of the artist's workCuming, E. D. (Edward William Dirom)
General
George Morland: Sixteen examples in colour of the artist's work
Cuming, E. D. (Edward William Dirom)
Morland, George, 1763-1804
It was soon after he left Rolls Buildings to reside with some other
friend that he was arrested for the last time. The sum due was trifling,
but Morland had no means of discharging it, and was conveyed to a
sponging-house in Eyre Place, Eyre Street Hill, Hatton Garden. Refusing
the offers of friends to pay the debt, he insisted on remaining in
custody. He had frequently shown bitter resentment at the way his
quondam friends worked him for their own advantage, and preferred to
stay where he was. He strove to work; but the overtaxed brain and body
refused, and while at his easel he fell from his chair in a fit. For
eight days he lay almost insensible with brain fever, and then, without
recovering consciousness, he died.
George Morland's was a singular character. His love of flattery and
dread of affront may account for his choice of companions; he shrank
from association with his social superiors, finding congenial friends
among pugilists, grooms, sweeps, and persons whom he suffered to profit
by his recklessness in money matters. Endowed with a keen sense of
humour, whose artistic expression found vent in caricature, he found his
principal amusement in playing schoolboy practical jokes. George Dawe
hits off his character in a sentence when he says that Morland "never
became a man"; throughout his life his faults were the faults of a boy
and his virtues the virtues of a boy.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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