drawing
- Museum number
- 1885,0711.261
- Description
-
Study for a family portrait group; ten figures grouped in various poses on a chequered pavement, in the background, mansion or pavilion with a high-pitched roof, a lake, distant house and hills, to right, a sphinx with trees beyond. c.1740-42 (?)
Pen and brown ink, over red chalk, and grey wash and watercolour
- Production date
- 1740-1742 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 323 millimetres
-
Width: 440 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- The attribution of this work to Hogarth has been doubted. Oppé stated 'while the broken and shaky pen work is sufficiently in Hogarth's manner, the spineless and languorous type of insipidity is scarcely his, and the colouring and the deliberate suavityof composition are so unusual for him as to arouse more than a suspicion that the attribution...is mistaken. If the drawing is to be regarded as Hogarth's, it must be supposed that at a late period in his life he returned to conversation pictures and in an entirely different mood from that of his early days.' (p. 57, no. 91, pl. 88). Nevertheless the smooth rotundity of the faces, especially the children, have much in common with Hogarth's portraits of the 1740s. The composition suggests a family group posed formally in the grand manner and a work of this nature might well have demanded a preparatory study of such elaboration as found here but no comparable painting is recorded and the building in the background with a high-pitched roof may be adapted from a Continental source.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1877/8 London, Grosvenor Gallery, no.382
1891-3 BM 'Dwgs & Sketches by Cont'l & Brit Masters', no. 181
1934 BM, 'Exhibition of English Art', no.286
1956/7 London, Royal Academy, 'British portraits', no.580
1964 Dec-May, BM, 'Hogarth', no.61
1989 Aug-Nov, Cini Foundation, Venice, 'Hogarth', (ex cat.)
- Acquisition date
- 1885
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1885,0711.261
