07/04/12
Quentin Blake: As Large as Life
The Foundling Museum
12 January – 15 April 2012
The Foundling Hospital was set up in 1739 by Captain Charles Coram, following nearly 20 years of campaigning, and finally being granted a Royal charter by George II. During the 18th century, nearly 1,000 babies each year were abandoned in the streets of London, and, without such philanthropic causes as Coram’s, they were simply left to perish. The Foundling Museum, set up in 1998 in the original building on Coram’s Fields, tells the story of the hospital and some of its early children. It also contains a number of works of art by William Hogarth (1697-1764) and his contemporaries. Hogarth, as one of the founding governors of the hospital, initiated the idea that artists might donate paintings and sculptures in order to attract wealthy, polite society, in the hope that they might make donations for the care of the children.
To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://diary.darlingcollective.com/?p=470