The Singing Party

c. 1732/1760

Philip Mercier

Painter, French, born Germany, 1689 - 1760

Five men and boy, all with pale skin, crowd around a book of music propped on a wooden stand on a piano or similar instrument in this horizontal painting. Light falls across the scene from high to our left. The boy is closest to us, in the lower left corner. Shown from the shoulders up, he holds an open book but looks up at the keyboardist. His lips are mouth parted and his face deep in shadow. Three of the men appear to sing, one plays a bassoon, and the keyboardist plays with grim determination, his downturned lips pressed tightly together. The keyboardist’s eyebrows are lowered under a high forehead. He wears a long, gray wig and a gray jacket. The bassoonist is over his shoulder to our left. He appears to be bald or balding and wears a frilly white cravat tucked into an ochre-yellow vest. His eyes and cheeks bulge as he plays, his lips pressed around the reeds. The brown suits of the other three men nearly blend into the wall behind them, and they all have chin-length gray hair, presumably wigs. The man to our far left glares down at a book with his dark brows arched up and away from his nose, and his lopsided mouth open wide. The man next to him leans in to look at the book in front of the pianist, and the third singer, to the far right, lifts one hand as he opens his mouth wide, his brows gathered, and his wig pushed back on his head.

Media Options

This object’s media is not available for download. Contact us about image usage.

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Duncan Phillips

  • Dimensions

    overall: 73.1 x 92.1 cm (28 3/4 x 36 1/4 in.)
    framed: 92.7 x 112.1 x 6.9 cm (36 1/2 x 44 1/8 x 2 11/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1952.4.2


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Painted for George, 1st Baron Vernon [1709/1710-1780], Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire; by descent to Francis, 9th Baron Vernon [1889-1963]. (Arnold Seligmann, Rey & Co., Inc., New York); purchased 1940 by Duncan Phillips, Washington, D.C.; gift 1952 to NGA.[1]
[1] The gift by Duncan Phillips was made "on behalf of the Phillips Gallery" (now The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1972

  • Extended loan for use by The Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1972.

1984

  • English Caricature 1620 to the Present, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1984, no. 35, pl. 13.

Bibliography

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 68, as by William Hogarth.

1967

  • Baldini, Gabriele and Gabriele Mandel. L'opera completa di Hogarth pittore. Milan, 1967: no. 199, repro.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 60, repro., as by William Hogarth.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 46, repro., as British School

1984

  • English Caricature 1620 to the Present. Exh. cat. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1984: no. 35, pl. 13.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 21, repro.

1992

  • Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 169-171, repro. 170.

Wikidata ID

Q20177866


You may be interested in

Loading Results