Admiring the antique

This present composition recalls Hogarth's treatise on the Analysis of Beauty. Plate 1 of the Analysis closely resembles the composition of the present drawing. Hogarth's treatise was based on the aesthetics of the serpentine line of beauty derived from the female shape. Hogarth writes of the stark contrast in the Analysis between statues and beautiful girls 'Who but a bigot, even to the antique, will say that he has not seen faces and necks, hands and arms in living women, that even the Grecian Venus doth but coarsely imitate.'(R. Paulson, Rowlandson: A New Interpretation, New York, 1972, p. 27). Rowlandson often contrasts a beautiful girl with the crowd around her, such as in Southwark Fair. It seems here in this present watercolour that Rowlandson goes further comparing both the young lady with the fat old gentleman as well as extending these aesthetics into the stautuary around them.

Another version of the present drawing is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford entitled A Statuary's Yard.