Wet-nursing was a method of ensuring that the infants of wealthier families were breast fed, but not by their mothers. Wet-nursing as a practice was fashionable until the middle years of the nineteenth century, where often the child was sent away to live with the nurse.
The image deliberately contrasts the wealthy and fashionably dressed mother with the humbler dress and surroundings of the nurse. Some babies became estranged from their own families, as shown here with the child clinging to the nurse.
Its companion picture, A Visit to the Boarding School, in the Wallace Collection, is thought to show the same mother and daughter when older, continuing the separation between mother and child.
George Morland was an English artist, primarily known for his paintings of animals and rustic subjects.