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Your galleryMoses Brought to Pharaoh’s Daughter
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Watch the small boy turn from his mother at left toward the princess on the dais, and find the pyramid in the distance that sets the scene in Egypt.
Hogarth painted the scene this drawing records for the Foundling Hospital in London, and the subject suited the place: Moses’s mother reluctantly gives up her son to be raised by Pharaoh’s daughter. Like Paul before Felix, the drawing was probably a study for an engraving after the painting. Hogarth signed it with his initials and the date 1751 and wrote a reference to the Book of Exodus at the bottom.
Various red chalks (one oxidized to black) on cream laid paper · 40.6 × 52.5 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Rococo
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Moses Brought to Pharaoh’s Daughter
- Artist
- William Hogarth English, 1697–1764
- Date
- 1751
- Medium
- Various red chalks (one oxidized to black) on cream laid paper
- Dimensions
- 40.6 × 52.5 cm (16 × 20 11/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.







