Figure 2.10 Johan Zoffany RA: The Gore Family with George, 3rd Earl Cowper, oil on canvas, 78.7 ×
97.8 cm, c. 1775. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
Source: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.Hogarth was adept at adapting the conversation piece in his satirical prints, where “gracefull and naturall
easy actions” (George Vertue cited in Fenton, 2006, 52) often combined with examples of mischievous,
immoral or corrupt behavior. Zoffany, like Hogarth, often approached his conversation pieces like
theatrical performances in which the sitters appeared to participate in a performance (Retford, 2011, 113–
117). Marcia Pointon (1993, 159–172) has decoded more serious treatments of the subgenre, revealing
how the position of each sitter is carefully chosen, as a playful yet effective means of conveying relations
of gender, genealogy, inheritance and succession. The “modern” eighteenthcentury conversation piece
offered a more intimate and affectionate alternative to grand Baroque group portraiture of the preceding
century, even though some artists, for example, Hogarth, used an “observational” approach that quoted
freely from the visual conventions of Baroque classical theatre (Webster, 1978, 16).
Genre Painting
The taste for portraits of sitters in more informal, domestic settings, and for conversation pieces,