A Sailing Match
Oil Painting
ca. 1831 (painted)
ca. 1831 (painted)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
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 | |
| Object type | |
| Titles |
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| Materials and techniques | Oil on panel |
| 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 |
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| Style | |
| 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 | |
| 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 |
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| Collection | |
| Accession number | FA.147[O] |
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| Record created | June 1, 2006 |
| Record URL |
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