The Farmyard shows Morland at the height of his powers, in the early 1790s, after the huge success of Inside of a Stable (58 1/2 x 80 1/4", London, Tate Gallery) at the Royal Academy in 1790 and before drink and the drudgery of churning out formula farmyard scenes took the life out of his painting. Particularly beautifully painted here are the sow and piglets in the foreground and the donkey giving suck to her foal. Although Morland's textures are slightly uniform--the leaves and straw, for example, are hardly differentiated--he nevertheless conveys the atmosphere of a soft afternoon in high sunmer, the stillness interrupted by barnyard grunts and shufflings, and the feeling of endless time for the farmer and his lady to gossip or flirt the afternoon away.

Richard Dorment, from British Painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: From the Seventeenth through the Nineteenth Century (1986), pp. 237-238.

LITERATURE:
Joseph Grego, "The Art Collection at 'Bell-Moor,' The House of Mr. Thomas J. Barratt--I," The Magazine of Art, vol. 21 (1898), p. 133, pt. 2, p. 195, repro. p. 193, pt. 3, p. 265; George C. Williamson. George Morland: His Life and Works. London, 1904, pp. 108, 110; Walter Gilbey and E. D. Cuming. George Morland: His Life and Works. London, 1907, repro. opp. p. 118; George C. Williamson. George Morland: His Life and Works. London, 1907, p. 137; David Winter. George Morland (1763-1804). Stanford, California, 1977, p. 178 no. P79, p. 234 fig. 38.