George Morland (1763–1804) exhibited at the Royal Academy at the age of ten, and from that time on each year saw many pictures from his brush. He seldom painted pure landscapes. But whatever his theme the landscape setting is almost invariably worthy of particular attention. In many notable pictures of gipsies or wood-cutters it is, in fact, not the fat, invertebrate figures of men and women that hold the eye. The imagination is captured instead by the bower of shade, by the deep wild-wood of the background. So, too, in various coast scenes, the chalk cliffs against which breakers dash in blinding spray, the trees bending before the wind, the rifts of blue sky showing through scattering storm clouds, the feeling of rain in the air, certainly count for as much in the general impression as do the men tugging at the rope or lading wagons with the spoils of the sea. Nearly all of Morland’s domestic pictures have an exquisite framework of old oak trees, climbing vines, and flowering shrubs. J. T. Smith[646] says that Morland was “the first artist who gave the sturdy oak its peculiar character in landscape painting.” As a painter of animals Morland excels. His horses are of especial interest for he does not expend his art on portraits of noted racers or thoroughbreds, but on work-horses, and preferably on such horses at the moment of release from toil. “The Inside of a Stable” (1791) in the National Gallery, and “Horses in a Stable” (1791) in the South Kensington Gallery are two of his finest works; and they show not only his power of painting dim old interiors in the softest blend of color, but they show particularly the attentive sympathy with which he had studied horses. Many similar pictures could be cited but chief among them for pathetic understanding is “The Blind White Horse.” Pigs were among Morland’s favorite subjects. So frequently did he introduce them into his pictures that the title-page of a book of his sketches portrayed him leaning over a fence and making a drawing of three fat sows. The animals in his pictures were all studied from the life. The white horse so often depicted by him was modeled from an old nag he bought and kept for a fortnight in his painting room. He regularly kept by him various sorts of animals for study, “dogs, rabbits, guinea-pigs, fowls, ducks, pigeons, mice, and many other kinds of livestock,”[647] and sooner or later these were sure to appear in his pictures with convincing realism.