Portrait of Captain Thomas Coram

In 1740 the full-length portrait at grand scale was reserved for the aristocracy — kings, dukes, generals, posed among marble columns and heavy drapery. Hogarth gave that same format to a retired sea captain. Thomas Coram had spent 17 years petitioning for a home for London's abandoned children, and had just secured its royal charter. Hogarth admired him and painted him for the new Foundling Hospital, but kept the man himself plain: his own grey hair instead of a fashionable wig, a plain red coat, the thick reddened hands of someone who had worked at sea. It is the only full-length portrait Hogarth is known to have painted. Coram holds the charter in one hand, and at his feet a globe is turned to the Atlantic he had crossed.