George
Moreland

One of the most talented English artists of the second half of the 18th century. In this artist's oeuvre dominant place belongs to landscapes and genre scenes. He wrote scenes from the life of Gypsies, small-scale farmers, not wealthy landowners. Unsophisticated and sincere realism of the works of Giuseppe Verdi. The Moreland reflects the existential, everyday life, devoid of complicated dramatic collisions and conflicts. In the landscapes of John.Moreland is a "Rustic look", "the Approaching storm" reflected the provincial, rural England, have not affected the rapid industrial revolution of the 18th century.

The life of George Moreland could serve as a plot for a novel in the spirit of Smollett or Fielding, where adventures follow one another, the scene is transferred from the tavern in debtor's prison, and revelry gives way to a brawl. The lifestyle of Moreland it was not measured and virtue. Unbridled passionate temperament, exuberant vitality, forcing you to find taste in a rough entertainment had involved him in adventures of a dubious.

And yet his life is not the story of the rake's progress, and the history of the tragic riot lone, desperate attempt to break out of a strictly regulated framework of bourgeois morality.

Moreland belonged to a family of artists and was a pupil of his father, a stern and imperious. Life in the family home and work in my father's workshop (and as a child he was the assistant, or rather, an apprentice of his father) was terribly weighed down the Moreland. Work, work every day, monotonous and severe way, the unsmiling faces of the family, constantly reminding him about his duties and how much time this family was described in the English literature! And of course, that when Moreland came of age, he hastened to withdraw from parental care, to achieve freedom.

However, in addition to a thorough knowledge of the craft of the painter, received into the family, the young artist had no life experience. Barely breaking free, he immediately appeared in the hands of dealers, hopelessly involved in debt, he landed in debtor's prison, and then fell more than once.

Married the sister of artist ward for a while, it seemed, changed his life. Moreland has received a new artistic context; the ward was engraving his paintings, and in his own painting he imitated with some even reverence. Through ward Moreland met with the famous George. R. Smith, who is also willing to engraved paintings of the young artist.

Soon, however, this apparent prosperity is destroyed. Moreland breaks with the family and dipped in the most unrestrained debauchery. He was greeted in the restaurant, in the Gypsy camp: it leads friendship with boxers, jockeys, horse horses. Gambling debts and other expenses he pays for his paintings. Carbon monoxide fumes in his absurd life, he manages to work constantly writes one thing and another (all they made about four thousand works): landscapes, rustic genre, sentimental and moralizing scenes.

Often these paintings are specially designed for engraving.

They represent a series, United by a more or less coherent story — always with a moralizing conclusion. Corny boredom of such engravings fully bathed striking subtlety and elegance of execution. Needless to say that Moreland was not concerned with the psychological credibility "of a Girl mourning the death of birds" or "Fruit of bad behavior." He sought only to give the original for the engravings, in the best way suited for this delicate and sensitive equipment.

The real talent is revealed in the Moreland village scenes and landscapes. Nowhere is the work of the artist, as in the village where he fled from his creditors. It seemed, there he again found himself, this serenity breathe his rural scenes. Their stories are simple: it is the traveler from village outposts, two peasants over a beer, the groom ("stable"). Their main charm lies in its extremely acute sense of oneness with nature or unity of all nature in General. If people are placed in the landscape, always calm in nature all the time something happens, something changes. Fresh wind bends the branches of the trees, runs through the grass, ruffled the mane of horses; dismal cloud instantly changing the lighting; the last ray of the sun, sinking, quivering on the wall of the hut ("the Approaching storm", the Hermitage).

The manner of Moreland — narrow, as if quivering strokes— emphasizes the internal dynamics. The artist has a special sharpness of vision, a special keenness of perception of nature characteristic of the citizen who escaped from the noise, dust and the muffled city skyline to rest.

Landscapes of Moreland not painted from life: they are constructed from aptly observed elements. They expressed not so much a real impression of the location and how much an artist's dream of an idyllic existence, harmonic fullness of being.