The Family of John, 2nd Duke of Montagu and an Attendant

William Hogarth helped popularize the small-scale conversation piece in the early 1730s, taking the conventions of full-scale aristocratic group portraiture and making them suitable to patrons from the gentry and middling ranks. The identity of this family has been lost but their home is filled with expensive goods and furnishings such as Chinese porcelain, much of it imported to England through expanding trade networks in Asia and Africa, or made from imported raw materials. The canvas has been cropped slightly on the left, leaving a pair of disembodied hands holding a tea tray. In its original state, the figure serving tea probably represented a young African servant, another sign of this family’s pretensions to refinement and status.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016