The Squire's Door - YCBA Collections Search

George Morland, 1763–1804, British, The Squire's Door, ca. 1790

Creator:: George Morland, 1763–1804
Title:: The Squire's Door
Date:: ca. 1790
Medium:: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:: 15 5/16 x 12 7/8 inches (38.9 x 32.7 cm)
Credit Line:: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:: Public Domain
Accession Number:: B1976.7.58
Classification:: Paintings
Collection:: Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:: B1976.7.58FR
Subject Terms:: beggar | child | columns (architectural elements) | costume | dog (animal) | door | genre subject | horses (animals) | house | peasant | poor | poverty | squires | woman
Access:: Not on view
Note: To make an appointment to see this work, please contact the Paintings and Sculpture department at ycba.paintings@yale.edu. Please visit the Paintings and Sculpture collections page on our website for more details.
Link:: https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:292
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British country sports such as fox hunting were rituals that reinforced class distinctions at a time when a distinctive working-class consciousness was beginning to be formed. George Morland often represented the encounter between country gentry and the rural poor in his paintings, which were typically reproduced as moralizing mezzotints. In this scene, an elegant lady stops before going riding to dispense alms to a beggar girl who has come to her door. Morland represents her charity as an act of benevolence, reinforcing the social hierarchy by showing the gentry as good and the poor as submissive and dependent. Here the realities of country life are ignored, and the little girl is shown as healthy and cherubic despite her poverty, a testament to the ongoing benevolence of the squire’s daughter.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016

Sidesaddle, 1690-1935 (National Sporting Library and Museum, 2018-09-07 - 2019-03-24) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Sensation and Sensibility: Viewing Gainsborough's " Cottage Door " (The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, 2006-02-11 - 2006-05-14) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Sensation and Sensibility: Viewing Gainsborough's " Cottage Door " (Yale Center for British Art, 2005-10-06 - 2005-12-31) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

The New Child - The Origins of Modern Childhood in English Art 1730-1830 (Joslyn Art Museum, 1996-03-09 - 1996-05-05) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

The New Child - The Origins of Modern Childhood in English Art 1730-1830 (Dixon Gallery & Gardens, 1995-12-10 - 1996-02-04) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

The New Child - The Origins of Modern Childhood in English Art 1730-1830 (Berkeley Art Museum, 1995-08-23 - 1995-11-19) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Ann Bermingham, Landscape and ideology, the English rustic tradition, 1740-1860 , Thames and Hudson, London, 1987, pp. 53-54, fig. 28, ND1354.4 B47 1987 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 162-163, N590.2 A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Catherine M. Gordon, British paintings Hogarth to Turner, Frederick Warne, London, 1981, p. 44, ND466 G67 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christiana Payne, Toil and plenty : images of the agricultural landscape in England, 1780-1890, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1993, p. 36, fig. 13, ND1354.4 P39 1993 (YCBA) [YCBA]

James Christen Steward, The New Child : British Art and the Origins of Modern Childhood, 1730-1830, , University Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, 1995, p. 180, fig. 77, N6766 S78 1995 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

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