Create your own bespoke print of William Hogarth’s Marriage A-la-Mode: 3, The Inspection from our collection. About this painting Marriage A-la-Mode: 3, The Inspection, about 1743 © The National Gallery, London This painting joined our collection in 1824 With our custom print service, you can order your own fully customised reproduction from the National Gallery Collection & exhibitions. Choose your own size, print material & frames & have your masterpiece delivered straight to your door. ...

Create your own bespoke print of William Hogarth’s Marriage A-la-Mode: 4, The Toilette from our collection. About this painting Marriage A-la-Mode: 4, The Toilette, about 1743 © The National Gallery, London This painting joined our collection in 1824 With our custom print service, you can order your own fully customised reproduction from the National Gallery Collection & exhibitions. Choose your own size, print material & frames & have your masterpiece delivered straight to your door. ...

Create your own bespoke print of William Hogarth’s Marriage A-la-Mode: 5, The Bagnio from our collection. About this painting Marriage A-la-Mode: 5, The Bagnio, about 1743 © The National Gallery, London This painting joined our collection in 1824 With our custom print service, you can order your own fully customised reproduction from the National Gallery Collection & exhibitions. Choose your own size, print material & frames & have your masterpiece delivered straight to your door. ...

' Marriage A-la-Mode' was the first of Hogarth's satirical moralising series of engravings about the upper echelons of society. The paintings were models from which the engravings would be made. The engravings reverse the compositions. The final scene takes place in the house of the Countess's father. She has taken poison on learning that her lover has been hanged for the murder of the Earl, reported in the broadsheet at her feet. Her crippled child embraces her & her father removes a ring from her finger as a suicide's possessions were forfeit. In the centre an apothecary remonstrates with the servant whom he accuses of obtaining the poison. Through the window to the right is a view of Old London Bridge. A dog seizes his chance to make off with the frugal meal on the table. The paintings on the wall to the left are Dutch low-life scenes, indicating the taste of the alderman. ...

Venus was the goddess of Love & Mars the god of War. Venus was the wife of Vulcan & her adultery with Mars was notorious. The hairstyle of the goddess in the painting suggests the approximate dating. ...

This is one of several pictures, variously dated between 1757-69, acquired from the descendants of the Journu family, which lived in & around Bordeaux & for whom Perronneau worked extensively. A later inscription on the back of the portrait identifies the sitter as “M.me Legrix née d’ Hegar.” It is one of a small group of eighteenth-century pastels in the Collection. ...

Create your own bespoke print of Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo’s Mary Magdalene from our collection. About this painting Mary Magdalene, about 1535-40 © The National Gallery, London This painting joined our collection in 1878 With our custom print service, you can order your own fully customised reproduction from the National Gallery Collection & exhibitions. Choose your own size, print material & frames & have your masterpiece delivered straight to your door. ...

The Virgin is portrayed as the sorrowing mother (Mater Dolorosa), her hands clasped in prayer as she turns to contemplate her suffering son Jesus Christ, in the companion picture ' Christ Crowned with Thorns'. Many versions of the composition exist, which ...

Lagrenée was celebrated for his small-scale cabinet paintings of classical & mythological subjects. Here, three women tend to two infants within a sunlit loggia. The warm light, tiles underfoot, & leafy trees in the background suggest that the scene takes place in temperate climes. To an 18th-century audience, the women’s clothing would have been immediately understood as antique dress. Depictions of motherhood, & particularly breastfeeding, became increasingly popular in the second half of the 18th century. The writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau prompted a debate about mothers nursing their own children (then an uncommon practice). Lagrenée’s allegorical depiction of motherhood is both tender & elegant, executed with his characteristically meticulous brushwork & harmonious colouring. Signed & dated 1773, it is possible that Lagrenée exhibited Maternal Affection at the Salon of 1773 under the title ' La Douceur'. That painting was bought by the Earl of Shelburne (1737–1805), in whose posthumous sale of 1806 a ‘ Maternal Affection’ by Lagrenée appears. ...

This small panel is perhaps the companion to Monticelli's ' Fountain in a Park'. In both paintings the artist evokes the 18th-century tradition of the 'fete galante', initiated by Watteau, in which elegant courtiers enjoy themselves in parks & gardens. Mo ...