The Assembly at Wanstead House

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The Assembly at Wanstead House
HogarthWanstead.jpg
Artist William Hogarth
Yearc. 1728–1732
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions64.8 cm× 76.2 cm(25.5 in× 30.0 in)
Location Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Assembly at Wanstead House is a c. 1728–1732 group portrait painting by the English artist William Hogarth. It is now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Description

The painting is believed to have been commissioned to record the 25th wedding anniversary of Richard Child, Viscount Castlemain and his wife Dorothy Glynne Child. [1]

It shows the Viscount in the Long Ballroom of his newly built Wanstead House, seated at an ornate tea-table with his two eldest daughters in the far right foreground, wearing a red coat. His wife, ostensibly the central figure of the painting, suddenly turns away from her card game pointing towards him her card the ace of spades, an allusion to her guests and the viewer that her husband was her winning card; thus does Hogarth bring his patron, the apparently compositionally modestly placed peer into centre-stage. The younger three children form a group in the left foreground.

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