James Figg, detail from A Rake's Progress, Plate II: His Levee

by William Hogarth
1735

Courtesy of the Yale Centre for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (Accession Number B1981.25.1412)

A fighter said to be James Figg holding his quarter-staffs stands between and a little behind a man said to be M. Dubois, the fashionable French fencing master, on the left, and a dancing master said to be John Essex on the right. Alan Borg suggests that "The lesson (and moral) is clear—foppish foreign fencing is replacing traditional English methods of fighting with staff and backsword" ("The Monarch of Marylebone Plains: James Figg's place in 18th-century British Art," The British Art Journal 5.3, 2004, p. 35).