Charles Spooner after William Hogarth
Plate: 35.9 x 25.3 cm
The print depicts a scene set at midday, a group of well-groomed French refugees file out of the Huguenot Chapel off the Charing Cross Road. The well turned out man, woman, and child are contrasted with the English group across the street. Here, before the Baptist’s Head pub, a black man fondles the breasts of a washerwoman. The boy before her has cracked the plate holding his dinner, spilling it onto the cobblestones, where an urchin girl picks through it. The street is physically divided in two by a gutter, bridged only by the carcass of a dead cat, and invites a clear contrast between the orderly, well-dressed French Huguenots and the unruly natives of the parish of St Giles in the Fields, the spire of which appears in the background.
The paintings upon which the original engravings are based were originally executed by Hogarth for the Vauxhall supper-boxes. Although issued as a series, unlike Hogarth’s Progress types, the Four Times of the Day was intended to highlight contrasts and contradictions rather than a moral narrative, focussing instead on the comparison of class and character in various parts of London. As Paulson comments, in form the series take some inspiration from earlier allegorical series, the pastoral scenes replaced or subverted by scenes of the town, and with Hogarth’s characters acting as parodies of traditional allegorical figures.
Paulson records Spooner’s set of four prints as “Publish’d 23rd June 1740”.
Paulson p104, BM Satires 2366 (Morning), Lennox-Boyd i/i.
Condition: Excellent clean impression. Framed in period style frame. Previously with Isaac and Ede.