Scène de conversation (Portrait de Sir Andrew Fountaine avec d'autres hommes et femmes)

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.