Hunt the slipper

FRED MORGAN ROI

Aylesbury 1856 – 1927 London

Ref: CA 105

Hunt the slipper

Signed lower right: Fred Morgan

Oil on canvas: 34 x 50 in / 86.4 x 127 cm

Frame size: 43 x 59 in / 109.2 x 149.9 cm

Painted circa 1903

Provenance:

Thomas McLean, London, 1903

Phillips London, 21st March 1989, lot 106;

Richard Green, London, acquired from the above;

Private collection, Europe, 1990

Exhibited:

London, Royal Academy of Arts, The Hundred and Thirty-Fifth Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1903, no.780

London, Richard Green, Exhibition of Victorian Paintings, no.12, illus. in colour

Literature:

Academy Notes, London, 1903, p.144, illus.

Royal Academy Pictures 1903, Cassell & Company, Ltd., London, illus. p.110

Frederick Morgan specialised in radiant images of childhood, animals, domestic genre and portrait subjects. His scenes of childhood adventures were his most popular pictures and many of them were reproduced as engravings and colour lithographs.  Morgan also captured some of the hardships of the Victorian age. In a painting shown at the Royal Academy of 1883 he portrayed Little Nell from Charles Dickens’ celebrated novel The Old Curiosity Shop and The Flood shown at the Royal Academy in 1897 was much admired for its dramatic narrative of a mother and her children poised on a roof above the encroaching waters.  Perhaps Morgan’s most famous work was his portrait of Queen Alexandra, her grandchildren and dogs which was exhibited at the Royal Academy of 1902. Thomas Blinks collaborated with Morgan on this work, painting the dogs. During the Boer War and the First World War, Morgan also produced a number of works celebrating handsome departing soldiers.

Frederick Morgan was part of a gifted family of artists. His father was John Morgan RBA (1823-1886) the celebrated history and genre painter who is often favourably compared to Thomas Webster. His wife was Alice Mary Havers (1850-1890) an enormously popular and witty genre and landscape painter who was trained at the South Kensington Schools and exhibited internationally. She was a member of the Society of Lady Artists.

Morgan had many paintings accepted to the prestigious the Royal Academy summer exhibitions between 1865 and 1916.He also exhibited extensively at the British Institution, at the Royal Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street, at the New Watercolour Society, at the Grosvenor Gallery and elsewhere.  He was elected a member of the Society of Painters in Oil Colour in 1883. In a more popular vein, Morgan’s work was much sought after by Edwardian companies for their advertisements. Like Arthur Elsley, he produced a colour lithograph for Bovril.

The work of Fred Morgan is represented in the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, the Townley Hall Museum and Art Gallery, Burnley, Lancashire, the Leeds City Art Gallery, the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and the Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield.