Hogarth and The Art of Noise review – London's whistles and wails, drums and dogs

Foundling Museum, London
This invigorating exhibition shows how the artist’s appetite for life bursts off the canvas and makes you see, hear and smell his time – don’t miss the soldier pissing against a wall or the one pinching an aromatic pie

When was the last time Britain was as broken in two as it is by now? William Hogarth has the answer. His masterpiece The March of the Guards to Finchley depicts the last war fought on mainland British soil – the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. The fact that it’s a hilarious, obscenely optimistic human chaos of a painting might give us cause for hope. Even with civil war on his doorstep, Hogarth finds joy in the down and dirty details of life.

He might not have found it so funny had he been Scottish. In August 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie landed in Scotland to try and restore the exiled Catholic Stuart dynasty to the British throne. His army quickly reached Derby, only 100-odd miles from London. But that was their high point. They were chased back into Scotland, and on 16 April 1746, the last hardcore Highlanders were catastrophically defeated by the Duke of Cumberland’s army at Culloden.

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