This is Hogarth's most ambitious portrait of children. He gives the
figures in this large painting something of the same frank grandeur found in his
portraits of adults, without losing a sense of childish gaiety.
The
Grahams' father, Daniel, was Apothecary to the King. The seated boy plays a
mechanical organ, as though accompanying the singing of the bird. The youngest
child is sitting in a chair with a long handle, beside which is an elaborate
basket of fruit.
However, the clock on the mantelpiece is decorated with
the figure of Cupid holding a scythe and standing beside an hour-glass, symbols
of death. Opposite, an animated cat has climbed the back of a chair and gazes at
the caged bird. We know that the baby was dead when the portrait was painted,
and this must account for the sombre references to mortality, at a time when
many children died in infancy.
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