Noon, plate 2 from the series The Four Times of Day

Hogarth painted The Four Times of Day about 1736 as decoration for Vauxhall Gardens, a fashionable pleasure garden along the Thames which catered to the aristocracy. Satirizing popular middle- and lower-class entertainments in London, the scenes also allude to traditional cycles of the four times of day, the four seasons, the four ages of man, and (possibly) the four stages of matrimony. Noon depicts a spring day as a congregation of French Huguenots exits the church at the right; the magnificently-clad couple in front may have just been married. Chaos reigns in the right half of the scene as fights break out and much food is split.