1704-1720: Further Speculation The oeuvre for the years 1704 to about 1720 is highly problematic. Monamy's painting output and activities in general until he was over 40 years old remains a matter for speculation. This page will speculate. Actually, the speculations threatened here have since been developed more fully on other pages, and this page has been neglected for about the past three years. The detail at right, from one of Hogarth's very familiar serial stage settings, was picked out for its illustration of London Bridge, a place said to have been frequented by Hogarth in his very early youth. It seems also to have been where Monamy maintained his shop, from 1706 until at least about 1714, judging from the places where his first four children were baptised. Hogarth certainly had more than something of the mentality of a playwright. Decorator, Signpainter --- and Scene-Painter? Lambert (1700-1765), Jack Laguerre (d. 1748), Hayman (1708-1776), de Loutherbourg (1740-1812) all worked in the theatre. The display of paintings in Vauxhall Gardens partook of play-acting: the visitors might appear in masquerade dress, and the paintings behind them in their supper-boxes would extend the illusion that they had entered a world apart from their everyday businesses. The great variety apparent in Monamy's oeuvre indicates that he had a mind which was interested in all aspects of the London life of his times --- in fact, had he devoted himself more exclusively to one particular specialization it would have been easier for posterity to pigeonhole his productions. Art historians are disconcerted, as they are, to an extent, by the exact nature of Mr de Loutherbourg's forays into the vulgar world of popular entertainment. Below is Mr de Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon. The perspective of the background scenery in this setting for a masque, going back almost a century before the Perspective Views engraved after Monamy, and many others, struck me as yet another indication of the visual links between the easel painter and the theatre designer. go to phase 0 back to phase 1 go to phase 2
conjectured early paintings: between 1705 and 1720
London Bridge, by Hogarth
click on above for more theatricality
Smugglers, by Mr de Loutherbourg
Sketch by Felix Kelly, from The Jacobeans at Home, by Elizabeth Burton
phase 3 phase 4
c1714-c1720: the missing years
sign-painting & decorating: mirrors
lighthouses
london bridge