The Jones Family Conversation Piece

Given the widespread misgivings in early eighteenth-century England about the moral implications of commercial prosperity, the initial reluctance of patrons to have themselves portrayed in circumstances of affluent refinement should hardly strike us as unexpected. But the very fact that the 1720s saw the gradual emergence of an imagery which spoke in...

On the morning of 27 May 1732, William Hogarth, Ebenezer Forrest and some other friends set out from the Bedford Arms Tavern in Covent Garden on an impromptu five-day excursion to and around Kent...