Joshua Ward receiving money from Britannia and bestowing it as charity on the needy. Engraving after Thomas Bardwell, 1749.

The portrait of Ward shows the portwine birthmark on the left side of his face, from which he received the sobriquet "Spot Ward"

The crowd of suppliants includes mothers with children, blind and lame people, a soldier and one black woman. They presumably represent the fact that, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, "Ward purchased three houses in Pimlico, near St James's park, and converted them into a hospital for his poor patients, to whom he showed grat generosity. For their benefit he took another house in the city, in Threadneedle Street. Large crowds resorted to him daily, and it became the habit of many ladies of fashion to sit before his doors distributing his medicine to all comers ... He gave away large sums in relieving distress."

[London] : [Published according to Act of Parliament], [24 Feb. 1748/9]

1 print : line engraving, with etching ; sheet 42.5 x 58 cm

Britannia comes at the head of the poor and offers a purse of gold to Mr. Ward who points to give it to Charity setting at her feet: Time draws a curtain in anger to see who it is that stops the passage of the croud. <T. Bardwell pinx.t. Published according to Act of Parliament> Lettering includes verses: " 'Tis thou O gen'rous Ward, thus bless'd we see, Crouded with those that seek thy charity; The poor distress'd, the sick, the lame, ye blind, Here seek relief, from thee relief they find. If volumes have been wrote on faith and hope, Sure charity deserves a greater scope, O happy Ward! thy charity's so great, It wants not words to make it more compleat, The multitudes that daily croud thy door, Loudly proclaim thee father of the poor."

Marjorie Trusted, " "A man of talent": Agostino Carlini (c. 1718-1790). Part I", The Burlington Magazine, 1992, vol. 134, pp. 776-784, p.779, note 28

W. LeFanu, "A catalogue of the portraits ... in the Royal College of Surgeons of England", Edinburgh 1960, no. 229, pp. 73-74

M. Kirby Talley Jr., "Thomas Bardwell of Bungay, artist and author, 1704-1767", The Walpole Society, vol. XLVI, 1976-1978, pp. 91-163, no. 107

Wellcome Collection 11971i

After Bardwell's painting in the opposite sense, now in the Royal College of Surgeons of England, part of which is reproduced in A.R. Hall, "The Abbey scientists, London 1966, p. 33