Conversation Piece (Portrait of Sir Andrew Fountaine with Other Men and Women)

In the early 1730s William Hogarth was still making his living with what London called the conversation piece, a small informal group portrait that showed a family or a circle of friends at ease rather than posed stiffly for the wall. In a year or two he would leave this polite work for the biting picture-stories that made his name. For now he built one of these groups around Sir Andrew Fountaine, a Norfolk gentleman known across Europe as a collector and judge of art, and turned that reputation into the subject. Three men lean over a painting they are debating. A woman opposite lifts a magnifying glass to a canvas of her own. Wine and fruit sit on the table. It is a room of people looking hard at pictures.