John Morgan, R.B.A.

Bought by George Fox, Harefield, Wilmslow in 1872 for £252;
Christie's, London, 12 May 1877, sold for 240gns to 'Cox';
Roy Miles, London where purchased by Christopher Forbes in 1979;
His sale, Christie's, London, 19 February 2003, lot 16, where purchased by the present owner

Royal Academy, 1869, no.472;
New York, The Forbes Magazine Galleries, Childhood in Victorian England: The Best of Corporate Art in America, 1985, no.6;
New Haven, Yale Centre for British Art; Oregon, Portland Art Museum and New York, The Forbes Magazine Galleries, Victorian Childhood, 1986;
Lancaster, The Judge's Lodgings; Blackburn, Museum and Art Gallery; Burnley, Townley Hall Art Gallery and Blackpool, The Grundy Art Gallery, The Age of Innocence: Children in Art 1830-1930, 1989;
Charlotte, Mint Museum of Art; Nashville, Cheekwood Museum of Art; Wilmington, Delaware Art Museum; Tampa Art Museum and New York, The Forbes Magazine Galleries, The Defining Moment: Victorian Narrative Paintings from the Forbes Magazine Collection, 2000-01, no.35

Art Journal, 1869, p.200;
R. Simon and A. Smart, John Player, Art of Cricket, 1983, illustrated plate XXVI;
Christopher Wood, Paradise Lost: Paintings of English Country Life and Landscape 1850-1914, 1988, pp.168-9, illustrated plate 149 as The Cricket Match

The canvas has been lined. The work appears in very good overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals areas of retouching across the background and sweeping areas in sky, a small area near centre of lower edge and some retouchings amongst the figures. Held in a gilt plaster frame
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

When The Fight was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1869, it was praised by the Art Journal as 'perhaps the cleverest genre picture in this gallery, if not in the whole Academy', a picture that 'made itself a favourite among all exhibition goers'.  The picture was judged as being ‘extremely good’, with 'the characters varied, not only in form but in motive and action'. The picture is a delightfully light-hearted social comment on the differences and similarities of a rustic pugilist and his public-school opponent. Both are encouraged by their friends and even by adult onlookers, one of whom holds back a clergyman who is attempting to halt the eponymous fight. The caged rooster further symbolises the fight and has presumably been set down by one of the two country-boys who has been carrying he animal to or from the market, or perhaps even to a cock-fight which was a very popular past-time for Victorian country-folk. It appears that the cause of the quarrel is a little girl who has been offended by the comment or gesture of one of the wealthier boys and is weeping in the foreground as her gallant companion rolls up the sleeves of his smock to defend her honour. It has an almost classical heroism, invoking the battles of the Trojans and Greeks, although it is overlaid with humour. The Art Journal critic felt that The Fight was on a par with the paintings of Thomas Webster, which was high praise as Webster was considered heir to the tradition of Wilkie and the seventeenth century Dutch school. He was a leading member of the Cranbrook Colony and specialised in humorous depictions of childhood misdemeanour.

In the early nineteenth century, boys had to grow up quickly and childhood was not always idyllic. For the majority of poor children in the countryside, education was non-existent or limited to a rudimentary schooling in a village dame-school until they were aged eight when they were put to work, often for long gruelling hours in the fields as bird-scarers, tending animals or harvesting crops. Rich children faced hardships of their own in public schools, which were notoriously lawless places where bullying and violence among the pupils was rife and encouraged by the teachers who believed that the boys would be toughened by fighting, as demonstrated by the lurid tales of David Copperfield (1850) and Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857). Morgan’s picture was painted at a time when the lives of children was changing for the better as an Act of Parliament in 1867 prevented children under eight from working in gangs in the field; in 1870 the first Education Act made it illegal for children under ten to work. By the mid-nineteenth century the aggression of middle and upper class school-boys began to be more channelled into organised sports. Rugby School gave its name to a popular sport, whilst there was a wall game invented at Eton, but it was cricket that was universally loved by schoolboys and seen as being central to the ethos of being an English gentleman. Morgan’s painting showed that although children’s energies could be ‘civilised’ by playing cricket, scuffles would still break out as “boys will be boys”.

John Morgan was one of the greatest painters of crowd scenes, nicknamed 'Jury Morgan' after the success of his 1862 British Institution exhibit Gentlemen of the Jury. He had been born in Pentonville in London but when he painted The Fight he was living in Aylesbury and it is likely that the picture depicts the nearby countryside. The Fight was bought by George Fox of Elmhurst Hall in Harefield near Wilmslow, a retired Manchester businessman who had an interest in rural traditions and was the owner of a famous herd of cattle. His first wife Annie was interested in educational reform and campaigned for better practices in schooling; after her death in 1876 Fox paid for the building of a schoolhouse for forty country children in Harefield at a cost of £2,200. His large art collection contained pictures by most of the prominent mid nineteenth century genre painters, including examples by John Calcott Horsley, Thomas Webster, Marcus Stone, John Pettie, Edward Matthew Ward, Henry Stacy Marks and Thomas Faed.