'During the Sermon' signed indistinctly lower left 'Fred Morgan 1873' and indistinctly inscribed on old labels to the reverse 'Fred Morgan/5 Clyde Street' and 'Waiting for Ma...' oil on canvas 34 x 30cm Footnote: Provenance: With G Turk Esq., High Street, Wanstead, Essex, in 1898, The Estate of Mrs Nora Waugh, Chigwell Hall, Essex, 1982; Sale, Cheffins, Cambridge, 21st March 2002, lot 24, where acquired by the present owner Exhibited: London, French Gallery, 'Winter Exhibition', 1873, no.34; Royal Society of British Artists, 1874, no.21 Although the painting has an old label 'Waiting for Ma…' attached on the reverse, it appears to have been exhibited under the title 'During the Sermon', first at the French Gallery 'Winter Exhibition' in 1873, and the following year, at the Royal Society of British Artists, in 1874. Indeed, the work strongly recalls John Everett Millais's well-known painting 'My First Sermon', which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1863 (no.7). Both paintings depict little girls, similarly shown sitting in their church pews, swathed in winter coats and hats, each one with her hands thrust deep into a muff held on her lap, a discarded hymn book at her side, unopened. Frederick Morgan married a fellow artist, Alice Havers, on 13th of April 1872 and they lived at 5 Clyde Street in the early 1870s.