Portrait of Mrs. Sandys

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 within a poor but educated family, and trained as an engraver, he was in touch with the raucous life. However, he was also a popular and highly successful portraitist. His portraits were admired for their vividness and naturalism, qualities particularly appreciated by an English public. That so admired honest directness in the presentation of his subject is splendidly embodied in this portrait.