George IV was reportedly ‘disposed to make a Collection of the Works of British Artists’. He paid 250 guineas for this work on the advice of Benjamin West, when he saw it at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1810. He commissioned David Wilkie to paint a pair for it, which resulted in his ‘Blind Man’s Bluff’ (RCIN 405537). The title given above is taken from the Royal Academy catalogue of 1810 (the work is sometimes just called ‘The Country Choristers’) and helps to clarify its meaning. Taking his cue from Dutch and Flemish depictions of disreputable low-life (George IV had many very highly valued paintings by Teniers and both Ostades), Bird depicts a rough country pub full of old fashioned furniture and a motley collection of patrons. The drinking, the disorder and the wife and child driven from the door are all characteristic of scenes of drunken depravity, but here the message is different: for the verger conducts a rehearsal for his church seen through the window in the late evening sun. This is a harmonious disorder expressing the essential God-fearing decency of the English working man and woman: a very comforting message to absorb seventeen years into a war with a revolutionary, atheist republic.