'Goosey, goosey gander'

The present work was probably executed at Gomshall near Shere in Surrey where Alice Mary Havers and her husband, Fred Morgan, spent their summers. It belongs to a series of pictures she painted around this time with subjects taken from nursery rhymes. The Times described Goosey, goosey gander as 'a mashy bit of common, with a little maiden 'sair hauden down' by the hissing geese...showing both in figures and landscape the thoroughness of workmanship which ladies must not be offended with us for calling manly, with a tenderness and sweetness of feeling which we are quite willing to call feminine, and a happy harmony of subject and sentiment which we hope may be said to be independent of sex' (The Times, 22 May 1876, p. 6).

We are grateful to Terry Parker for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.