Chairing the Members / engrav'd by W. Hogarth & F. Aviline [sic].

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William Hogarth
1697-1764
Chairing the Members / engrav'd by W. Hogarth & F. Aviline [sic].
engraving
image: 15 11/16 x 21 5/16 inches (399 x 542 mm); sheet: 16 15/16 x 22 inches (430 x 559 mm)
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1900.
Peel 1227
Published: 
[London] : Published 1st. Janry. 1758 as the Act directs, [1758]
Provenance: 
Formerly owned by Sir Robert Peel.
Notes: 

With the words "Plate 4" following caption title.
Dedication below image: To the Honble. George Hay, one of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, &c. &c. This Plate is most humbly Inscrib'd By his most Obedient humble Servant Willm. Hogarth.
The second state of this plate. Cf. BM catalog entry.
Library's copy trimmed within plate mark.

Summary: 

Scene in a country town with two newly-elected members of parliament (one a representation of George Bubb Doddington, the other visible only as a shadow on a distant wall) carried shoulder-high along the street, led by a blind and ragged fiddler and surrounded by a chaotic and disreputable crowd; two chimney boys sit on the church wall, a dancing-bear interferes with a donkey's load and is about to be clubbed by the driver, the one-legged bear-leader (dressed in sailor's clothes) is engaged in a fight with a man swinging a flail, a rifle slung over a monkey's shoulder discharges to the horror of a black serving woman, a sow and her piglets up-end a woman as they charge across the street, a soldier stripped to the waist for a boxing bout is taking tobacco from a wrapper; to right, dishes of food are being carried into an elegant house where victory is being celebrated.

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