Morning

William Hogarth, The Enraged Musician

Hogarth, a London artist born and bred, stuffed his pictures with characters and incidents he saw in the streets. The print of The Enraged Musician (1741), Henry Fielding wrote, "is enough to make a man deaf to look at." Beneath the window of the distracted foreign violinist are pictured, from left to right, a ballad monger with her squalling baby, a girl with a rattle, a tinkling boy, an oboist, a milkmaid, a boy beating a drum, a paver pounding the street, a dustman (garbage collector) ringing his bell, a knife-grinder, a sow-gelder blowing a horn, and a fishmonger. At the left a parrot screeches; at the right, below, a dog barks, while high above a chimneysweep calls and cats wail. Church bells peal in the background. Outside the window, a poster for The Beggar's Opera (NAEL 8, 1.2613–56), which Hogarth himself had depicted, contrasts the musical taste of this bewigged foreigner with real English music.