There’s quite a lot happening in William Hogarth’s The March of the Guards to Finchley, painted in 1750 and on display at the Foundling Museum in London. Soldiers are gathering, drinks are being consumed and there seem to be numerous matters which require urgent attention. And not forgetting that the army is supposed to be getting ready to defend London. I rather like that Hogarth has found room for the practical difficulties of getting everyone to leave at the same time. I’ve been on pub trips with much the same problem, it feels like herding cats sometimes. Having noted that, at least on our trips the continued existence of the Hanoverian monarchy hasn’t generally depended on someone finishing their pint at a point that I consider appropriate.
The painting looks back to the Jacobite rising of 1745, when supporters of the exiled Stuart dynasty sought to overthrow George II and restore the Stuarts to the throne. Charles Edward Stuart, better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, led an army south from Scotland which reached Derby, bringing the threat uncomfortably close to London. Hogarth shows Guardsmen gathering at the northern end of Tottenham Court Road before marching to a camp on Finchley Common. I suspect that by the time everyone was ready, someone would have announced that they needed the toilet.
Hogarth painted the artwork several years after the event and I’m not entirely sure that he was attempting an accurate account. There’s drinking, street trading, arguments, upset people and the soldier near the centre seems to have enough to deal with before he even considers the Jacobites, standing between a pregnant woman and another woman angrily waving some form of printed material. There’s something rather delightful in looking at the details of the artwork, although I suspect I’d have been rather less appreciative had I been responsible for getting this particular group to Finchley.
How the painting reached the Foundling Hospital is another really rather lovely part of its history. Hogarth, a committed supporter of the institution which I’ll be posting about for ages now, organised a lottery in which subscribers could win the original painting. When the draw came, he gave his remaining 167 tickets to the Hospital, and one of them won. I’ve attended charitable raffles where the principal attraction was a bottle of supermarket wine, so this seems a considerably more decadent arrangement. Having mentioned that, I’ve heard from my friend Richard of some very decadent auctions that he’s been to and he always seems to come away with some rather expensive stuff. I’m not sure that he’s ever got a painting though, but I imagine he’d find somewhere to put it before mentioning what he’d paid.