Literary influences on the life and art of George Morland (1763–1804): From "Aesop" to "Tom Jones"

"Imagination formed no part of the mental endowment of George Morland," wrote J. J. Foster in his "Introduction" to the 1904 facsimile edition of George Dawe's 1807 "The life of George Morland." Foster continued: "As a man he never read anything: at any rate, there is hardly a scintillation of intellectuality in the whole of his work." The artist's lack of academic learning was considered to be inseparable from his art. This essay will not join in that literary quarrel that huffed and puffed 200 years ago. It will direct attention instead away from these biographers and from Morland's defects as a man to explore his reading as a child and youth, to see why it affected his life and art. [Abridged Publication Abstract]