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These are the four Graham children. Their father was Royal Apothecary to George I and George II. Thomas, in his gilded baby carriage adorned with a bird, had already died when Hogarth was working on the picture. The crossed carnations (funeral flowers) beside him are a tender reminder of death. A table-clock surmounted by a winged cherub holding an hour-glass and scythe shows the time as 1.45pm, perhaps the hour Thomas died. Seated beneath a goldfinch in a gilded cage, Richard Robert plays a bird organ and Anna Maria starts dancing. The cat startles the goldfinch by scrambling with its claws up the back of the chair in the same way that death suddenly snatched the youngest Graham child. Henrietta, the eldest, dangles cherries, the ‘fruit of paradise’ before baby Thomas, who reaches out to grasp them.
Title
The Graham Children
Date
1742
Medium
Oil on canvas
Measurements
H 160.5 x W 181 cm
Accession number
NG4756
Acquisition method
Presented by Lord Duveen through The Art Fund, 1934
Work type
Painting
The National Gallery, London
Trafalgar Square, London, Greater London WC2N 5DN England
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