'A Visit to the Child at Nurse', coloured mezzotint by William Ward after a painting by George Morland; England, 1788

Coloured mezzotint of landscape proportions showing a mother visiting her child who is lodged with a wet-nurse in her cottage. The scene takes place in the interior: the nurse, in white cap and apron over a brown-striped open gown and blue petticoat, is seated on the edge of a large curtained bed with the child on her lap. The mother, fashionably dressed in a white gown with a blue sash and black shawl, and with her hair powdered beneath a large featther-trimmed hat, has evidently just entered, accompanied by a girl in a white dress, pink sash and large black hat. The mother is attempting to take the child, who clings to the more familiar nurse; the pap boat and spoon on the stool by the nurse's side probably indicates that the child is being weaned onto more solid food, and will soon be returned to her mother. Asleep on the bed is another young child: the white dresses worn by this and the visited child probably indicates that both are 'at nurse', while the child in a dark green frock sitting on the floor with leaves from the vine around the door is more likely to be the nurses's own. On the floor in the foreground is a pull-alomg toy horse and cart loaded with three barrels and a naked wooden doll.

Bought of Michael Finney Antique Books & Prints, 15 Pierrepont Arcade, Camden Passage, London N1 8EF, with another Ward mezzotint of a Morland painting (Misc. 710-1992): £350 for the two. RF 91/856

The original painting by George Morland is in the collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Wet-nursing was a method of ensuring that the infants of wealthier families were breast fed, but not by their mothers: the image deliberately contrasts the wealthy and fashionably dressed mother with the humbler dress and surroundings of the nurse. Wet-nursing as a practice was fashionable until the middle years of the nineteenth century, but was not without risk, especially where the child was sent away to live with the nurse. Some children did not survive the experience, some felt estranged from their own families, as shown here. And if, as was usually the case, the nurse was also breastfeeding her own child, and her milk became insufficient to feed both children, her own child might suffer as she would be expected to give priority to her employer's child.

The Wallace Collection suggests on its website that the child on the nurse's lap is the girl who is being visited at her school in Morland's painting 'A Visit to the Boarding School', now in the Wallace Collection, and from which Ward also made a mezzotint (see Misc.710-1992)

MISC.709-1992