Isabella, Duchess of Manchester, was one of Thomas Coram’s key female supporters who provided the catalyst for the establishment of the Foundling Hospital. In the face of male indifference and risking society’s disapproval, these women put their names to the first petition submitted to George II in 1735, that called for the establishment of a home for ‘abandoned and deserted young children’. The support of these pioneering women was crucial in overcoming moral concerns about Coram’s project, enabling his campaign to gain the critical momentum that led to the establishment of the UK’s first children’s charity.

Yinka Shonibare CBE, RA is a British-Nigerian artist whose work explores issues of cultural identity, race and colonialism, often by re-imagining well known Western art works, particularly British art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He is best known for sculptures which use ‘African’ fabrics; Dutch printed cotton whose origins lie in Europe’s trade routes with Indonesia and Africa.

Trumpet Boy was shown as part of The Foundling Museum’s 2016 exhibition FOUND, curated by Cornelia Parker. The figure of the boy is dressed in a Victorian suit made from bright African textiles, he holds a cornet to his mouth, and his head is a celestial globe with the stars renamed after famous black musicians.

John Beard was a tenor singer who created many roles in Handel's operas and oratorios, and sang at Handel's benefit concerts for the Foundling Hospital. Beard is depicted half-length turned slightly to his left, head facing forwards, in a red coat trimmed with gold, white shirt and cravat and wig, holding a hat under his left arm.

Jacqueline Wilson is an award-winning children’s author and former Children’s Laureate. In 2008, Wilson became one of the Foundling Museum’s first Foundling Fellows. For her Fellowship, Wilson wrote her first historical novel, 'Hetty Feather', about a nineteenth-century foundling girl growing up in the Foundling Hospital.

The portrait was commissioned as part of the Museum's year-long commemoration in 2018 of 100 years of female suffrage.

Children with birds & dogs #3 is one of 24 large-scale drawings from two bodies of works - Children and Dogs, and Children, Birds & Dogs, the latter made especially for the Museum - donated to The Foundling Museum in 2019 by Blake.

Featured in their 2021 exhibition (25 June – 26 September 2021), Quentin Blake: Gifted, the show conveyed the internal emotional landscape of childhood.