Hear the Eighteenth Century Come Alive: Hogarth and the Art of Noise

Detail, The March of the Guards to Finchley, William Hogarth

Dear Reader,

Between May and September of 2019, the Foundling Museum in London hosted a spectacular exhibit centered on famous Hogarth painting, The March of the Guards to Finchley. This exhibit, entitled, "Hogarth and the Art of Noise," was designed to match this painting with recreations of sounds from the eighteenth century, including dialogue. You can access the entire 12:12 long track of the exhibit here. Feel free to listen along while viewing the images of the exhibit.

The Foundling Museum, located a few blocks east of the Russell Square tube station in London, preserves the memory of one of the earliest and best kept European orphanages. Today, the building is used exclusively as a museum, with a large collection of eighteenth-century art and material objects.

One of the centerpieces of the collection is the famous Hogarth painting, The March of the Guards to Finchley. Last summer, I was fortunate enough to be in London while the Foundling Museum was highlighting this part of its collection with a special exhibit. Specifically, the museum attempted to replicate the soundscape of Hogarth's painting. As a result, the basement of the museum was given over to a special exhibit on the sounds of London and the military world of the Jacobite Rebellion in the eighteenth century.

The special exhibit consisted of a number of panels and alcoves with reproduce eighteenth-century documents and images, usually with headphones for listening to pieces of reproduced music. Front plates from period works were also reproduced.

With that said, the centerpiece of the exhibit was The March of the Guards to Finchley itself,and the soundscape produced to accompany it. A long cushioned bench was helpfully provided for patrons to sit and listen to the entirety of the soundscape. 

The brief selection of below can help give a feel for the experience of the entire soundscape. 

The exhibit made clever use of the limited space that was available for it, and allowed patrons sufficient time to experience the entire soundscape without being rushed. All in all, the exhibit firmly rested on its use of The March of the Guards, and managed to use the painting in a highly effective and innovated manner. I'll leave you with some close-up shots of the painting. 

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Thanks for Reading, 

Alex Burns