If you study History of Art, people generally assume you’re a nice, conscientious, plummy-voiced girl. Sometimes, people are right. It is the only subject I can think of that requires a student to describe what is already printed on the exam sheet. ‘In the foreground of the picture is a tree — in full leaf! — and on the horizon, a tower.’ It feels a little basic. But with art history podcasts description is everything. And to do it well is a real art in itself.
The presenters of the Art Newspaper’s The Week in Art podcast were superb last week in their exploration of a portrait by William Hogarth. Considered one of his finest, the painting hangs in the Foundling Museum in London and shows a flushed-cheeked Thomas Coram (1668–1751), founder of the hospital for abandoned children.
Coram was in many ways the dream subject for Hogarth, and thus for the imaginative listener, too.
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