George Morland (26 June 176329 October 1804) was an English painter. His early work was influenced by Francis Wheatley, but after the 1790s he came into his own style. His best compositions focus on rustic scenes: farms and hunting; smugglers and gypsies; and rich, textured landscapes informed by Dutch Golden Age painting. Much of his work was intended for reproduction in prints, from which his publishers made a good deal more money than he did. Despite being a heavy drinker who enjoyed a rackety lifestyle, he was enormously prolific, though the quality of his work increasingly suffered. After many troubles with debts in his last decade, he died at the age of 41. Biography George Morland was born in London on 26 June 1763. He was the son of Henry Robert Morland, and grandson of George Henry Morland, said by Cunningham to have been lineally descended from Sir Samuel Morland, while other biographers go so far as to say that he had only to claim the baronetcy in order to get it. Morland began to draw at the age of three years, and at the age of ten (1773) his name appears as an honorary exhibitor of sketches at the Royal Academy. He continued to exhibit at the Free Society in 1775 and 1776, and at the Society of Artists in 1777, and then again at the Royal Academy in 1778, 1779 and 1780. His talents were carefully cultivated by his father, who was accused of stimulating them unduly with a view to his own profit, shutting the child up in a garret to make drawings from pictures and casts for which he found a ready sale. The boy, on the other hand, is said to have soon found a way to make money for himself by hiding some of his drawings, and lowering them at nightfall out of his window to young accomplices, with whom he used to spend the proceeds in frolic and self-indulgence. It has been also asserted that his father, discovering this trick, tried to conciliate him by indulgence, humouring his whims and encouraging his low tastes. He was set by his father to copy pictures of all kinds, but especially of the Dutch and Flemish masters. Among others he copied Fuseli's Nightmare and Reynolds's Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy. He was also introduced to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and obtained permission to copy his pictures, and