I bambini Graham

Hogarth painted the four Graham children in 1742. Their father, Daniel Graham, was apothecary to the royal household, and at first glance this is a bright, busy portrait of well-off children with a pet bird and a music box. Look closer and it is partly a picture of loss. By the time Hogarth finished, the youngest child, the baby in the decorated cart, had died, and much of the painting quietly marks it. The gilded cage holds a goldfinch, an old symbol of Christ's Passion. A cat has just spotted it and is clawing up the chair, the bird flapping in alarm, the way death had suddenly taken the smallest child. On the clock behind them a small winged figure holds a scythe and an hourglass, time carrying life away even as the older children laugh and the music plays on.