John Morgan 1823-1886

John Morgan was the son of the popular painter Frederick Morgan and he inherited his father’s interest in painting subjects of Victorian childhood. John Morgan exhibited one hundred and fourteen pictures at the Royal Society of Artists on Suffolk Street and many pictures at the Royal Academy between 1852 and 1882, the majority of which were of children. Typical titles include Marbles, Ginger Beer and The Young Politician and his paintings are now in many public collections, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Guildhall Art Gallery and at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

Images of rustic interiors with happy family groups were very popular with Victorian audiences and artists like John Morgan, Thomas Webster, Frederick Daniel Hardy and Thomas Faed specialised in endearing cottage interiors. Mischievous but endearing children, pleasant-faced parents and jovial grandparents inhabit these paintings and although the interiors are humble and presumably those of mining or agricultural families, there are always smiling faces. Often centred around the theme of an older figure reading to his family or of a warm meal being brought to the table these paintings embody the importance of family unity, even in the adversity of poverty. These paintings follow in the tradition of artists like David Wilkie and William Mulready. As Christiana Payne has pointed out ‘Paintings of cottage interiors could demonstrate the virtues and good character of the rural poor – and by extension, of the nation as a whole… Like nineteenth-century novels, these paintings incorporate careful characterisation; a psychological study of relationships between different characters; pathos or humour; closely-observed passages of description, involving not simply the outlines of objects but the subtleties of light and shade, colour and reflection.’ (Christiana Payne, Rustic Simplicity; Scenes of Cottage Life in Nineteenth Century British Art, exhibition catalogue for Djanolgy Art Gallery in Nottingham, 1998, pp. 5-6)

In the lower right corner of The Wandering Musician is a discarded newspaper which clearly reads 'The News of the World', the first edition of which was published on the 1st of October 1843.