Richard Morton Paye

Possibly Phillips Collection, Wales;

Possibly, by whom anonymously sold, London, John A. Hermon, 20-21 April 1807, lot 262, (The Milk Girl);

Possibly, anonymous sale, London, John A. Hermon, 25 February 1812, lot 35 (The Milk Girl);

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 20 June 1975, lot 18 (as Attributed to John Opie)

Private Collection, Chicago, circa 1990-2021;

Thence acquired by the present owner.

London, Royal Academy, 1786, no. 165.

D., "Biography: R.M. Paye," in Literary Gazette (26 January 1822), p. 60, (as The Sulky Boy, and its Companion);

"R.M. Paye," in New Monthly Magazine 6, no. 15 (1822), p. 137, (as The Sulky Boy, and its Companion);

J. Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotint Portraits, London 1884, vol. IV, p. 1646, reproduced in an engraving by John Young;

A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and Their Work from Its Foundation in 1769 to 1904, London 1906, vol. VI, p. 84;

E.W. Clayton, "Richard Morton Paye," in Connoisseur 37 (1913), p. 232.

ENGRAVED

J. Young, The Distress'd Girl, London 1786.

Richard Morton Paye was a talented eighteenth-century British painter who achieved considerable success during his lifetime. Aptly described by Ellis Waterhouse as "an elusive artist of distinguished quality," Paye's inventiveness and skill are on full display in the present painting. This newly rediscovered work was previously known through a popular contemporary engraving by the artist's close friend and sometime collector, John Young.¹ Executed on a monumental scale and in the artist's typical idiom, the painting depicts a young girl clasping her hands together and looking down worriedly at a pail of milk that has toppled over. A boy peers up at her from the lower right, seemingly amused at the girl's misfortune, while a dog laps up the spilled milk in the foreground.

The present painting merits distinction as the sole work exhibited by Paye at the Royal Academy in 1786, and was engraved that year by John Young. Specializing in genre scenes, often depicting children, his compositions were in tune with the artistic vogue and growing demand for so-called "fancy pictures"—sentimental scenes of everyday life that often involved a narrative element. In effort to capitalize on the popular appeal of his charming, often comedic scenes, many of Paye's genre paintings, especially those depicting children, were engraved and published in pairs. This not only satisfied a growing demand and market for prints in Britain and continental Europe, but it also provided an additional source of income for the artist. John Young's engraving of The Distressed Girl was issued together with an engraving after Paye's The Sulky Boy, a painting he exhibited at the Royal Academy the year prior in 1785.

¹ John Young after Richard Morton Paye, The Distress'd Girl, engraving. London, British Museum, inv. no. 2010,7081.7520.