'The Company of Undertakers' print

Made:
1736 in London
artist:
William Hogarth
The Company of Undertakers. William Hogarth del Mezzotint.

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The Company of Undertakers. William Hogarth del Mezzotint.
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

The Company of Undertakers. Wm. Hogarth del Mezzotint. Cut down 31x25cm.

‘The Company of Undertakers’ by William Hogarth (1697-1764) is a comment on the large number of quacks in England during the 1700s. (Quacks sold medical treatments to a public desperate to try anything that claimed to cure illness and disease.) Three unorthodox practitioners who appeared regularly in the news sit above a group of professionally qualified doctors sniffing their pomanders, which are in the top of their walking sticks. From right to left they are: Joshua ‘Spot’ Ward (1684/5–1761), who sold a number of pills which may or may not have worked; Mrs Mapp (baptised 1706-1737), a bone setter who is carrying a symbol of her trade – a bone; and ‘Chevalier’ John Taylor (1702-1790), an ‘oculist’, or eye doctor, carrying an eye on a bone.

Details

Category:
Art
Object Number:
1980-364
Materials:
paper
Measurements:
overall: 290 mm x 250 mm
type:
print
credit:
Edmunds, A.