A ballad brought to life
Joyful News to Bachelors and Maids was the first major painting by a female contemporary artist to enter the Museum’s Collection. Nicola Bealing’s bawdy canvas features satirical vignettes of young men and women flirting and fornicating – strongly reminiscent of the works of Hogarth, whom the artist cites as an influence.
In creating this piece, the artist conducted extensive research into the Foundling Hospital archives. This led her to the Broadside Ballads – ephemeral, political, bawdy and funny 17th and 18th century songs that were sung and sold on the streets of London. One ballad in particular, ‘Joyful News to Batchelors and Maids, Being a Song in Praise of the Foundling Hospital,’ struck the artist. This ballad was written in 1741, directly after the Hospital’s official opening. Each verses satirise the concept of the institution, suggesting that such a place would only serve to encourage promiscuity and sex outside of marriage. With an established home and charity for abandoned infants, men and women might philander freely.
Bealing’s work brings this raunchy ballad to life. On her canvas, lusty couples frolicking between luscious flowers and mischievous cupids, overjoyed that there are now no real consequences for copulation and pregnancy out of wedlock. Bealing says of the work:
‘It’s impossible to read [the ballad] – verse upon verse of carefree lust and exuberant fornication – without seeing the images in every verse. My painting Joyful News was the result… Against a background of hot, bright red, couples from every level of society are busy joyfully loving, lusting and fondling. Baroque cupids have given up trying to organise things. Pert tulips and other spring flowers are joining in. I wanted to suggest a kind of ‘hide and seek in a Pleasure Garden’, with a twining and tangling of bodies and nature.’
About the artist
Nicola Bealing is an award-winning painter and printmaker, hailing from Hertfordshire. Her vibrant and surreal figurative work bears many similarities to Hogarth. Like Hogarth’s, Bealing’s subjects are infused with distinctive character and personalities. Each piece is rooted in an overwhelming sense of narrative, a narrative that is often darkly humorous and absurd. Bealing’s works have been collected by several UK and US institutions, including the British Museum. She is currently based in Cornwall.
