The Condition of the Turkeydetails

We owe Mr. Morris a slight indulgence, which is cheerfully accorded, on the score of his title. His little joke is decidedly extra-pictorial, and therefore liable to the objections of those who would rigidly enforce the rule that the frame of a picture is large enough to enclose all its meanings, and that none should overflow onto the pages of the catalogue. In this case, however, the title serves a certain purpose in fixing a more pointed attention on the attitude and expression of the farm-yard boy, who is making the “condition of Turkey” the subject of a care and of an interest more intimate than he would probably give to the country much discussed of politicians; and there is in his face and action a deliberate connoisseurship which the artist has well given, and which forms a humorous antithesis to the unconscious demeanour of the fattening birds. More than one artist has discovered of late the expression that exists in a bird—an expression all the more quaint and subtle that it does not lie in the creature’s immovable face, but in the character of the form and in the trick of movement. A turkey is especially expressive, and always grotesquely so; vainer than the peacock without the peacock’s beauty, in him human pretentiousness finds a somewhat apt parody. (p. 149)