
Paintings
George Morland (c. 1788) A Visit to the Boarding School: The Wallace Collection

This picture shows a mother visiting her daughter at boarding school. A schoolmistress leads the girl into a room where her mother wait. Although the mother greets her child with open arms, the girl appears hesitant to see her, apparently yet to notice her little brother who has dropped his hat and stick in his excitement to greet his sister.
The painting articulates a widespread reaction against boarding schools, which was prevalent in the eighteenth century following Rousseau’s call for greater parental involvement in the rearing of children. Does the schoolmistress looked concerned for her pupil? Are the schoolgirls at the door pained that it is someone else’s mothers who has come? Is the seamstress sitting with dress patterns regarding the mother with a hint of disapproval?
Its companion picture, Visit to the Child at Nurse, now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, is thought to show the same mother and daughter when an infant: and illustrates similar estrangement between mother and child.
George Morland was an English artist, primarily known for his paintings of animals and rustic subjects.
George Morland (c. 1788) A Visit to the Child at Nurse: The Fitzwilliam Museum

Wet-nursing was a method of ensuring that the infants of wealthier families were breast fed, but not by their mothers. Wet-nursing as a practice was fashionable until the middle years of the nineteenth century, where often the child was sent away to live with the nurse.
The image deliberately contrasts the wealthy and fashionably dressed mother with the humbler dress and surroundings of the nurse. Some babies became estranged from their own families, as shown here with the child clinging to the nurse.
Its companion picture, A Visit to the Boarding School, in the Wallace Collection, is thought to show the same mother and daughter when older, continuing the separation between mother and child.
George Morland was an English artist, primarily known for his paintings of animals and rustic subjects.