A Marcha da Guarda para 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.