Portrait of Mrs. Sandys

William Hogarth

1741

Purchase, grant from the Government of Canada under the terms of the Cultural Property Export and Import Act, and Horsley and Annie Townsend Bequest, inv. 1982.11

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

A woman with light brown hair is depicted in an oval portrait, wearing a pearl necklace and a white satin dress with lace trim. A blue fabric is draped over her right shoulder. This work is identified in the artist’s own hand in the upper-left outer rim of the feigned oval. Portrait of Edwin Sandys , resides in the collection of the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, England. Edwin Sandys was a medical doctor, educated at Oxford, where he became a fellow, a dean and ultimately a professor. Hogarth was renowned for his moralistic and satirical prints and paintings exploring the moral turpitudes and cruelties of contemporary London society, the degenerate effects of alcohol and gambling on its upper classes, and, with a more humorous eye, contemporary politics and customs. Growing up in central London with