an English painter of animals and rustic scenes. Morland began to draw at the age of three years, and at the age of ten (1773) his name appears as an honorary exhibitor at the Royal Academy. His talents were carefully cultivated by his father, who has been accused of stimulating them unduly with a view to his own profit, shutting the child up in a garret to make drawings from pictures and casts for which he found a ready sale. The boy, on the other hand, is said to have soon found a way to make money for himself by hiding some of his drawings, and lowering them at nightfall out of his window to young accomplices, with whom he used to spend the proceeds in frolic and self-indulgence.
