A copy of the second print in William Hogarth’s series “Four Times of the Day”: Set outside St Giles’s-in-the-Fields. On the right an elegant crowd leaves the French Huguenot church; they are dressed in the height of French fashion. Two women kiss on the far right in the customary French way. They are contrasted with Londoners on the left. The two groups are separated by a gutter down the middle of the road; a dead cat lies in the gutter foreground. The Londoners stand outside a tavern with the sign of the Good Woman (one without a head); a woman and man in the second-storey window look surprised as the contents of her bowl are tossed out the window. In the foreground, left, under a sign with John the Baptist’s head on a platter and reading “Good Eating”, a black man embraces a servant girl and a small boy (evidently intended by his curly red hair to be identified as one of the Irish inhabitants of the area) cries because he has broken a pie-dish. A little girl squats as she eats the fallen pie off the ground. The clock in the steeple in the background reads 12:30.
- Printmaker: Cook, Thomas, approximately 1744-1818, printmaker.
- Title: Noon [graphic] / designed by Wm. Hogarth ; engraved by T. Cook.
- Publication: [London] : Published October the 1st, 1797, by G.G. & J. Robinson, Pater-noster Row, London, [1 October 1797]
Hogarth 797.10.01.03++ Box 310
Acquired January 2021
A scene in a sitting room, a man in a fit of anger kicks over a chair and table set with tea; a pitcher, cups and saucers, tongs and other tableware are in flight or shattered on the floor. The man holds his wig in his left hand as a woman looks on with fear. Two cats fight in front of a fireplace above which hangs a seascape with rough waters and lightening. On the back wall another painting shows a man standing over a woman.
“Nude figures resting on a river bank in the shade of a tree; one woman reclining, another seated beside her at right, seen from behind and holding drapery over herself; a couple embracing at left, another couple in the water at right.”–British Museum online catalogue.
