National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

William Hogarth: The Denunciation; or, A Woman Swearing a Child to a Grave Citizen, 1729. In The Ends of Life, Keith Thomas writes of this painting, ‘Masculine honour was vulnerable to malicious paternity suits. [Here] a pregnant girl is being coached by her lover into swearing before a magistrate that a respectable elderly citizen (apparently a Dissenting clergyman) is the father of her child.’