Pigs in a Farmyard

"Pigs in a Farmyard" in the Museum of Croydon represents Morland's most natural combination of his two dominant subjects — the pig and the farmyard — in a single composition. The farmyard pig was everywhere in late eighteenth-century rural England, rooting freely in the mud of cottage gardens and farmyards, its presence an index of the household's ability to keep a family pig through to the autumn slaughter. Morland's pigs in farmyard settings are at their most naturalistically observed when placed in these open-air contexts, where the animals' characteristic behaviour — rooting, wallowing, foraging — could be depicted in convincing relationship to the ground and setting. Museum of Croydon's holding of this work reflects the wide distribution of Morland's farmyard subjects through the English provincial collecting network during the nineteenth century. His oil paint medium on this work allows him the full range of tonal manipulation that pig subjects demanded — the pale, slightly translucent skin of the animals requiring careful colour mixing to avoid looking chalky or lifeless.

Oil on panel or canvas, with Morland's pig-painting technique at its most characteristic: rounded, assured brushstrokes building up the animals' barrel-shaped bodies, warm pinks and ochres in the lit surfaces, cooler greys in the shadow zones. The farmyard setting is rendered with practical authority — ground texture, fencing, and any building fragments depicted with economical directness.