     |
||
|
|
||
 |
A levée is a reception held by a monarch or other high-ranking person on arising from bed. Tom is spending his inheritance on suppliers of expensive (and in particular unnecessary) services who try to encourage him to ape the aristocracy. The pictures on the wall, however, show his lack of taste, scenes from classical mythology hang next to pictures of game-cocks. The characters in the picture would readily have been identified by Hogarth's contemporaries as real life London citizens. They include a paid bodyguard who lookes like a criminal, a jockey (kneeling in the front), a dancing-master with a kit-violin (a small three-stringed violin), a huntsman (blowing a horn), a music master, a French fencing master, a quarterstaff (a wooden staff used as a weapon) instructor, a landscape gardener (behind the Rake, with a drawn plan), a poet, and a tailor. |