The Enraged Musician

The Enraged Musician is a 1741 etching and engraving by English artist William Hogarth which depicts a comic scene of a violinist driven to distraction by the cacophony outside his window. It was issued as companion piece to the third state of his print of The Distrest Poet.

The image is ostensibly a purely comic scene. While the violinist attempts to rehearse, the noisiest inhabitants of London pass by his window. On the far left a squawking parrot perches above a pregnant ballad-seller singing "The Ladies' Fall" while holding her bawling baby. A young girl with a rattle looks with amazement at a boy urinating below the musician's window (this is an often repeated image in Hogarth's work: similar scenes can be seen in The March to Finchley and in his illustrations for Hudibras and may be a reference to John Gay's "Trivia"). The boy has a cord tied round his waist attached to a trailing slate which would clatter along the ground as he ran. In the centre of the picture a young milk-seller calling her wares provides the the real focus of the picture; though set back more from the viewer than some of the subjects, she appears larger than the children and the crouching figure of the cutler. She balances a large pail of milk on her head and is the only subject that looks out at the viewer. This, combined with the large expanse of white apron, draws the viewer's eye towards her. Ronald Paulson, the modern authority on Hogarth, suggests that she is singing and that her beauty and grace—she delicately lifts her skirt to avoid dragging it through the boy's urine—mark her out as the only natural musician in the scene; while the other inhabitants of the street produce discordant notes, the music of the violinist would be no better, because he has restricted himself by his studies and by removing himself from nature. He covers his ears to block out the cacophony of the street noise, but at the same time he denies himself the sweet music of the milkmaid's voice.