A series of unseen works by William Hogarth, possibly Britain's greatest 18th-century painter, have been discovered.

Hogarth was given a commission to realistically depict farm pigs and produced a number of pencil studies as well as a realistic and lovingly rendered masterpiece of Sus scrofa domesticus, the domesticated pig.

Oddly, unlike the drawings, the pigs in the final painted work resembled the politician, Sir Francis Dashwood^.

It is not known why Hogarth's wife and friends hid these works from public view during his and Dashwood's life.

^A real piece of work.