The Myth of the Artist in George Morland’s Studio

The Artist in His Studio with His Man Gibbs is the last image that George Morland, the celebrated eighteenth-century painter of rural scenes, painted of himself (fig. 1, circa 1802). The canvas stands out amongst other British self-portraits of the period for the unusual importance it gives to the setting of the painter’s activity. A disheveled Morland is here surrounded by various objects alluding to both his art and his dissolute lifestyle. The visit to the artist’s painting room, a cliché of much Old Master self-portraiture,¹ seems here to be reversed into a parody: Morland’s studio appears as the cold and squalid attic which (as one of his obituaries would put it) “served him for every purpose.”² The impenetrable eyes and shadowy expression which were by now conventionally accepted to indicate a condition of artistic melancholy become a dumb look and a pathetic grimace, as Morland looks over his shoulder at us, showing no interest in greeting his guests.³ Similarly, the high seriousness of art is diminished by its juxtaposition with cooking: the artist at the easel is mirrored by his servant Gibbs at the stove, as if painting was a mere means of fulfilling physical necessities.

This article explores Morland’s studio in this self-portrait as a crucial site for the construction of his artistic personality. In describing his art as the direct expression of his imagination, his lifestyle as outrageously bohemian, and himself as a painter disinterested in material rewards and misunderstood by the cultural establishment, willing to sacrifice his life for the love of art, Morland invented an extremely modern persona and recommended to posterity his own myth.

Figure 1.

George Morland, The Artist in His Studio with His Man Gibbs, circa 1802. Oil on canvas. 63.5 × 76.2 cm. Image courtesy of Nottingham City Museum and Art Gallery, Nottingham.

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) had passed away a decade earlier, but his towering figure still offered the model of the ideal artistic personality for Morland’s contemporaries. This was not surprising, given that Reynolds had been the most successful British artist of his age, the leading figure of contemporary artistic debates, and the author of a large number of self-portraits diffused through print. In his Discourse VI, he had stated: “The purport of this discourse…is, to caution you against that false opinion, but too prevalent among artists, of the imaginary powers of native genius, and its sufficiency in great works.”⁴ As President of the Royal Academy, an institution founded on the idea that art could be taught, Reynolds had promoted the image of the morally-impeccable intellectual artist, whose refinement was the product of a solid academic education based on the imitation of exemplary artworks. Consistent with these views, Reynolds’s self-portraits frequently stressed his status as man of letters and his achievement of an elevated social position.⁵

In their outward appearance, Morland’s earlier self-portraits had adhered to this vision of the artist: here he described himself as a polite and elegant individual in full control of his mental faculties.⁶ Nevertheless, these earlier self-portraits already subtly transgressed Reynolds’ model by stressing the sitter’s sensibility and imagination, indicating that Morland saw art as the spontaneous and original product of his interiority rather than the derivative output of academic knowledge.

The rules governing the London art world at the turn of the nineteenth century were indeed distant from those that Reynolds had promoted through the Royal Academy, despite the changes that the very existence of this institution had wrought both in artistic production and among artists as a professional class. The establishment of regular public art exhibitions meant an increasing pressure for painters to produce original works that could stand out from crowded walls and cater to a newly enlarged audience.⁷ Artists were therefore increasingly compelled to pursue expressiveness rather than imitation.⁸ Simultaneously, the painterly profession was distancing itself from other artistic endeavors with more practical aims, and painters...