Morland, GEORGE

Morland, GEORGE, painter, was born in London, 26th June 1763, the eldest son of Henry Morland, crayonist (1712-97), to whom at fourteen he was artied for seven years, and who brought him up with extreme rigour. No sooner, then, had he become his own master than he went hopelessly and utterly to the bad. His marriage in 1786 had no power to check him; and his whole after-life was a downward course of debt and dissipation. He was regular only in this, that 'every day he got thoroughly intoxicated, and then generally would lie all night long on the floor.' Yet he worked hard and rapidly, in the last eight years of his life turning out nearly nine hundred paintings and more than a thousand drawings. His strength lay in country subjects (pigs, Gypsies, and stable interiors); his sea-pieces, also numerous, are not so good. He died of brain-fever in a Holborn sponging-house, 27th Oct. 1804. See Lives by Dawe (1807) and Richardson (1895).