Music for Mars, or the Case of the Duke's Lost Sword

Abstract

For a long time Hogarth's painting The Savoyard Girl1 has been known only from an engraving published in 1799 (figs. 1 and 2).2 It recently resurfaced on the London art market and has proved on cleaning to be a charming object in good condition, exhibiting all the characteristics of Hogarth's mature style of around 1750. This came as something of a surprise, for when the painting was known only as a print, its small scale and low-life subject inclined art historians3 to class it with the works of Hogarth's early maturity of the 1730s, roughly contemporaneous with, or only slightly later than, depictions of low-life subjects such as The Harlot's Progress and The Rake's Progress. In fact, a closer look at its subject matter suggests a more precise date than one based on stylistic considerations, specifically, the autumn or winter of 1749. The first clue comes from a group of ribald prints published anonymously in the late summer of 17494 which had as their subject the supposed relationship of William Augustus, duke of Cumberland (172165), the soldiering third son of George II, with a common Savoyard girl.5 It is said that the affair was a frustrated one and that the duke's attempts to make her his mistress were unsuccessful. This, and his corpulence generally, were favorite targets of ridicule among his many enemies, especially, of course, the Jacobites, who loathed him for his brutal suppression of the 1745 rebellion. One of these prints, dated July 1749, portrays the obese duke on his knees in front of the humble hurdy-gurdy player, saying To Windsor shady kind retreat (fig. 3).6 The caption is John of Gant in Love, or Mars on his Knees, with a quotation from Congreve: Musick hath Charms to sooth the Savage