Children in the chapel
After the success of George Frederic Handel’s first benefit concert, the Foundling Hospital Governors began to envision the Hospital’s chapel as a potentially lucrative space, to be used for fundraising and publicity purposes. In the early 1770s, a few chosen children were taught how to sing and play the organ for Sunday services. Soon, more and more Foundlings began performing. These musical performances helped to publicise the institution’s charitable mission, as people flocked to the chapel to witness the children come together in song. Upon seeing the Foundlings, and hearing of their plight, members of the public often felt moved to donate, raising considerable funds for the Hospital, in addition to proceeds generated from almsgiving and pew rentals.
Foundlings on canvas
A Choir of Orphan Girls offers us a glimpse into what the Foundling choir may have looked like while performing in front of the congregation. Note the puffy bonnets, the red ringed collars, the white pinafores – these are distinctive elements of the original 18th-century Foundling uniform, designed by William Hogarth. Most large scale, 19th-century oil portraits don’t feature poor young girls as subjects – A Choir of Orphan Girls is a notable exception.
Unlike Hogarth, artist Thérèse Schwartze was not known to paint across classes. Her subjects were mostly upper middle class individuals, in addition to royals and aristocrats. Young female orphans, however, were a recurring motif within her work, and a few Schwartze studies expressly feature Foundling girls. Scholars believe that these works may have been modelled from life, as the artist frequently visited London between the years 1885 to 1905. There is a possibility that Schwartze came the Foundling Hospital, and heard the children sing in person.
About the artist
Known as the ‘Queen of Dutch Painting’, Thérèse Schwartze began painting in 1856, at the age of five – instructed and encouraged by her father, painter Johan Georg Schwartze. After her father’s death, Schwartze financially supported her family through her art. She established a successful, lasting career, and her style of portraiture was especially popular with newly rich Dutch industrialists. This was an unusual trajectory for the time, as middle-class women in Holland were largely expected to marry well rather than work to support themselves. Today, she is represented in several major museum collections throughout Europe. She is buried in Amsterdam, underneath a marble tomb memorial sculpted by her sister, Georgine. In 2004, her grave was named an official Dutch national heritage site.
A Choir of Orphan Girls
Thérèse Schwartze (1851-1918)
c.1900
Oil on canvas
Purchased for the Museum by the late David Pike, with additional acquisition costs supported by Jim Moyes and Peter Brown, 2022. Conservation funded through a grant from the Woodmansterne Art Conservation Awards 2023/2034