The March of the Guards to Finchley

This shows soldiers gathering on the Tottenham Court Road in London to march north and hold the capital against the Jacobite rising of 1745, when a Stuart claimant led an army down from Scotland. Hogarth painted the muster as chaos, drunk and quarrelling and distracted men rather than a disciplined column. He meant it as a gift to George II, who was expecting his guards honoured and took the disorder as an insult, and refused it. So Hogarth turned the picture into a lottery. Buyers of his print could pay a little extra for a chance at the original, and the unsold tickets he handed to the Foundling Hospital, a home for abandoned children he had long supported. The Hospital drew the winning number and has kept the painting ever since.