After 17 years of tireless campaigning, Thomas Coram
receives the Royal Charter from King George II to establish the Foundling
Hospital in 1739.
On 25 March 1741 the first 30 babies, 18 boys and 12 girls,
were admitted to the Foundling Hospital.
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For an in depth study see - Alan Borg Vol Xii 2002. Georgian Group Journal
https://georgiangroup.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GGJ_2003_02_BORG.pdf
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Theodore Jacobsen by Thomas Hudson.
Presented by the artist in 1746.
Theodore Jacobsen was a German merchant. In retirement he
became an amateur architect and was commissioned to design the Foundling
Hospital in 1742. He had become a Governor in 1739 and offered his services as
architect free of charge. In this portrait he is shown holding the
architectural plans for the Hospital. Jacobsen’s architecture was a means of
augmenting his social status as well as providing an outlet for his
philanthropy. He also designed the East India House in London, the Royal
Hospital at Haslar and the West Front of Trinity College Dublin. Thomas Hudson
was the most fashionable portrait painter within Establishment circles in
London in the 1740s and 1750s. He arrived in the capital from Devonshire in the
1720s and entered the studio of Jonathan Richardson.
Hudson married Richardson’s daughter Mary and inherited many
of his clients when Richardson retired in 1740. Hudson became a Governor of the
Foundling Hospital in 1746, along with a number of artists who frequented Old
Slaughter’s Coffee House on Saint Martin’s Lane. This group included Francis
Hayman and Samuel Scott. More than 30 members of the Foundling Hospital’s Grand
Court were past or future patrons of Hudson’s. He sat alongside Jacobsen on a
sub-committee which was tasked with choosing ‘ornaments’ for the Hospital. He
donated this painting to the Hospital in the year of his election, along with
his portrait of the Hospital's Vice President John Milner.
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/search/venue:foundling-museum-7069
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Daniel Lock (1681 - 1754).
Governor of the Foundling Hospital.
Mezzotint.
Lettered with title and production detail below image:
"Willm. Hogarth Pinxt." and "J. Mc Ardell Fecit".
They say c. 1742 - 65.
The original oil painting is in the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University.
Was involved with the designing of the Foundling Hospital in London; in this
portrait Lock is seen holding a plan for the Hospital.
Roubiliac’s bust of Lock at Trinity shows Lock surrounded by emblems of
architecture, painting, sculpture and music.
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1902-1011-3330
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/33874
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Samuel Wale was elected a Governor of the Foundling Hospital in 1746. There are three painted roundels of Greenwich Hospital, Christ's Hospital and St Thomas' Hospitalwhich he presented to the Hospital in 1748, to form part of the decoration of its Court Room.
Foundling Hospital, London. Etching by H. Roberts, 1749,
after J. Robinson after T. Jacobson
image courtesy the Wellcome Library.
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