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On display
Image of Gallery in South Kensington

A Sailing Match

Oil Painting
ca. 1831 (painted)
Artist/Maker
Mulready, William (painter (artist))
Place of origin
Great Britain (painted)

This painting is a classic example of Mulready's interest in contrasting the value of formal education wtih the process of learning through play. A wealthy boy on his way to school - indeed, Mulready subtitled the picture 'creeping like a snail unwillingly to school' (Shakespeare, As You Like It) - wistfully gazes at a group of poor children who attempt to blow their toy boat along with a roughly improvised roll of paper as he is led away from temptation by his mother or nurse. Such pictorial analogies have their root in the moralising genre scenes of 17th-century Dutch painting.

Object details

Category
Paintings
Object type
Oil painting
Titles
  • A Sailing Match (assigned by artist)
  • The Sailing Match - A Woman Urges on an Unwilling Schoolboy
Materials and techniques
Oil on panel
Oil Paint
Panel
Oil Painting
Brief description
Oil painting entitled 'A Sailing Match' by William Mulready. Great Britain, ca. 1831.
Physical description
An oil painting showing three boys and a dog crouching on the bank of a pond, trying to blow a toy boat across the water. Another boy, richly dressed, passes by and appears to want to join them, but is being led away by a woman (his mother or nurse).
Dimensions
  • Estimate height: 35.3cm
  • Estimate width: 32.1cm
  • Frame dimensions height: 54.5cm
  • Frame dimensions width: 48.5cm
Dimensions taken from Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860, Ronald Parkinson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: HMSO, 1990
Style
British School
Credit line
Given by John Sheepshanks, 1857
Object history
Given by John Sheepshanks, 1857. This is a reduced replica of a painting exhibited in 1831 (present whereabouts unknown).
Subjects depicted
Play
Children
Summary
This painting is a classic example of Mulready's interest in contrasting the value of formal education wtih the process of learning through play. A wealthy boy on his way to school - indeed, Mulready subtitled the picture 'creeping like a snail unwillingly to school' (Shakespeare, As You Like It) - wistfully gazes at a group of poor children who attempt to blow their toy boat along with a roughly improvised roll of paper as he is led away from temptation by his mother or nurse. Such pictorial analogies have their root in the moralising genre scenes of 17th-century Dutch painting.
Bibliographic references
  • K. Heleniak, William Mulready, 1980, pp. 129 and 137
  • Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860, Ronald Parkinson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: HMSO, 1990, p. 206
  • A catalogue of the pictures, drawings, sketches, etc., of the late William Mulready, Esq., R.A. (1786-1863.)., London : Printed by George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode for H.M.S.O., 1864 no.72
  • Pointon, Marcia Mulready, London : Victoria and Albert Museum, 1986 no.111
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
FA.147[O]

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Record createdJune 1, 2006
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O124616/a-sailing-match-oil-painting-mulready-william/
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