Abstract

In these compositions, the subjects that will both entertain and improve the mind, bid fair to be of the greatest public utility.From toddlers to teenagers, children are everywhere in Hogarth’s pictures. There are children of the drawing room and children of the streets; “little angels” shown putting on a play, “little devils” shown torturing animals; portraits of the sons and daughters of minor aristocrats and the upwardly mobile professional classes and gangs of youngsters gambling at cards on the pavements of St. James’s Street. Biblical images may lend gravitas or satirical point to the messages of the pictures: for example, in the theme of abandonment that lies behind the painting of the infant Moses Brought...