This painting shows a mother visiting her daughter at boarding school. The mother is seated and wears a large hat. Her daughter (the tallest girl holding hands with the lady in white) approaches her nervously while two younger girls peer into the room to watch what is happening. The mother and daughter seem to barely recognize each other and the mother makes no effort to get up or show any affection towards the young girl. However she does seem to have brought the gift of a fruit basket. The lady next to the mother appears to be showing a sampler of the girl's work.

This painting was not just produced to hang attractively on someone's wall; it has a moral message that would have been quite clear at the time it was painted. At that time a writer called Rousseau called for parents to be more involved in bringing up their own children. He said that wet-nursing (where a woman other than the child's mother breastfeeds the baby) and sending children to boarding school were both bad ideas. Morland supports this view by showing a lack of connection between the mother and daughter, suggesting that sending children away to school removes the maternal bond.

 

Nowadays it is not clear to us what the message of the painting is and we need to know more about the time in which it was made in order to understand what the artist is trying to tell us.