Frederick Morgan, R.O.I.

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 2 October 1985, lot 190;

Anonymous sale, London, Bonhams, 31 March 2021, lot 37;

Where acquired by the present owner.

Glasgow, Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, Spring 1878, no. 1128, price £130;

London, Dudley Gallery, Winter 1878, no. 148, price £150.

'Art Gossip – The Dudley Gallery', in Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 27 November 1878;

'The Dudley Gallery – Cabinet Pictures in Oil', in The Times, 28 November 1878, p. 4.

'Dudley Art Gallery', in Illustrated London News, 30 November 1878, p. 518;

'The Dudley Gallery', The Era, 1 December, 1878;

'Winter Exhibitions', The Pall Mall Gazette, 5 December 1878.

'Mr F. Morgan occupies a foremost position in virtue of his rich yet subdued and harmonious scheme of colouring... A gipsy mother, with her babe at her breast and a girl at her side, sitting despondingly on a heath under lowering clouds, while the damp sticks under the camp kettle slowly ignite.'¹

Morgan sent Under a Changeful Sky to the Spring Exhibition at the Institute of Fine Arts, Glasgow in 1878. It failed to find a Scottish buyer so he submitted it to the Dudley Gallery, London for their 1878 Winter exhibition 'Cabinet Pictures in Oil'; although oversize for a conventional 'cabinet picture' it was included and received praise from the critics.

Morgan consigned his unsold exhibition works to auction in London, but there is no further record of the present lot, until its reappearance over a hundred years later at Sotheby's in 1985.

During exhibitions, the work was mentioned positively in a number of critical reviews. The Aberdeen Weekly Journal noted that 'Fred Morgan enters on much more serious enterprise than usual in Under a Changeful Sky and he bears his burden well. These poor vagrants of his attract our sympathy and we shiver as we think of the life that lies before them.'² Meanwhile The Times commented that 'F. Morgan's Home through the Woods and his vagrants resting by their black pot and handful of lighted sticks, which he christens Under a Changeful Sky come more distinctly than any of the pictures we have as yet noticed under the head of art manufacture. But of their kind they are pleasant, rich, glowing in colour, skillful in workmanship, and showing a keen and trained sense of the effective and picturesque.'³ Writing in The Era, one critic cites the present lot as 'one of the best pictures in the gallery. It is well hung and deserves that privilege';⁴ while another notes 'Mr. F. Morgan's powerful 'Under a Changeful Sky' (148), in which a gipsy woman with a baby and girl seated on a wild common are superior to the heavy sky and thick atmosphere.'⁵

¹ 'Dudley Art Gallery', in Illustrated London News, 30 November 1878, p. 518.

²  'Art Gossip – The Dudley Gallery', in Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 27 November, 1878.

³ 'The Dudley Gallery – Cabinet Pictures in Oil', in The Times, 28 November 1878 p. 4.

⁴ 'The Dudley Gallery', in The Era, 1 December, 1878.

⁵ 'Winter Exhibitions', in The Pall Mall Gazette, 5 December 1878.