While reading
this article on hidden art today, I was reminded of a painting I saw in the
Norwich Castle Museum years ago. The paintings in the article were a second canvas meant to fit over another, while this one was actually partially painted over, but it still has an interesting story.
Frances Mathew Schutz in his bed, by
William Hogarth, was apparently commissioned by Schutz's wife "to remind him not to party too hard" (as I wrote it on the back of the postcard I bought at the time). According to the
Tate Britain website, "The canvas proved too indecorous in its imagery for Schutz’s Victorian descendants. They hired an artist to paint in a newspaper over the chamber-pot; only a recent programme of restoration returned the painting to its original state."
