William HogarthFRSA (/ˈhoʊɡɑːrθ/; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraver, satirist, cartoonist and writer. His work ranges fromrealistic portraiture tocomic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects",[2] and he is perhaps best known for his seriesA Harlot's Progress,A Rake's Progress andMarriage A-la-Mode. Familiarity with his work is so widespread that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian".[3]
Hogarth was born in theCity of London into a lower-middle-class family. In his youth he took up anapprenticeship with anengraver, but did not complete the apprenticeship. His father underwent periods of mixed fortune, and was at one time imprisoned in lieu of payment of outstanding debts, an event that is thought to have informed William's paintings and prints with a hard edge.[4]
Influenced by French and Italian painting and engraving,[5] Hogarth's works are mostly satirical caricatures, sometimes bawdily sexual,[6] mostly of the first rank of realistic portraiture. They became widely popular and mass-produced via prints in his lifetime, and he was by far the most significant English artist of his generation.Charles Lamb deemed Hogarth's images to be books, filled with "the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of words. Other pictures we look at; his pictures we read."[7][8]
William Hogarth byRoubiliac, 1741, National Portrait Gallery, London
William Hogarth was born at Bartholomew Close in London to Richard Hogarth, a poorLatin school teacher and textbook writer, and Anne Gibbons. In his youth he was apprenticed to the engraver Ellis Gamble inLeicester Fields, where he learned to engravetrade cards and similar products.[9][10]
Young Hogarth also took a lively interest in the street life of the metropolis and the London fairs, and amused himself by sketching the characters he saw. Around the same time, his father, who had opened an unsuccessful Latin-speakingcoffee house atSt John's Gate, wasimprisoned for debt in theFleet Prison for five years. Hogarth never spoke of his father's imprisonment.[11]
In 1720, Hogarth enrolled at the originalSt Martin's Lane Academy in Peter Court, London, which was run byLouis Chéron andJohn Vanderbank. He attended alongside other future leading figures in art and design, such asJoseph Highmore,William Kent, andArthur Pond.[12][13] The academy seems to have stopped operating in 1724, at around the same time that Vanderbank fled to France in order to avoid creditors. Hogarth recalled of the first incarnation of the academy: "this lasted a few years but the treasurer sinking the subscription money the lamp stove etc were seized for rent and the whole affair put a stop to."[13]
Hogarth then enrolled in another drawing school, inCovent Garden, shortly after it opened in November 1724, which was run by SirJames Thornhill,serjeant painter toGeorge I. On Thornhill, Hogarth later claimed that, even as an apprentice, "the painting of St Pauls and gree[n]wich hospital ... were during this time runing in my head", referring to the massive schemes of decoration painted by Thornhill for the dome ofSt Paul's Cathedral, and thePainted Hall atGreenwich Hospital.[12]
By April 1720, Hogarth was anengraver in his own right, at first engraving coats of arms and shop bills and designing plates for booksellers.
In 1727, he was hired by Joshua Morris, a tapestry worker, to prepare a design for theElement of Earth. Morris heard that he was "an engraver, and no painter", and consequently declined the work when completed. Hogarth accordingly sued him for the money in the Westminster Court, where the case was decided in his favour on 28 May 1728.[15]
Self-Portrait by Hogarth, ca. 1735,Yale Center for British Art.Hudibras Triumphant, one of the twelve engravings illustrating the adventures of Hudibras, a bumbling adventurer fromSamuel Butler's mock-heroic poem.
In 1726, Hogarth prepared twelve large engravings illustratingSamuel Butler'sHudibras.These he himself valued highly, and they are among his best early works, though they are based on small book illustrations.
One of Hogarth's masterpieces of this period is the depiction of an amateur performance by children ofJohn Dryden'sThe Indian Emperour or The Conquest of Mexico by Spaniards, being the Sequel of The Indian Queen (1732–1735) at the home ofJohn Conduitt, master of the mint, in St George's Street,Hanover Square.[21][22]
A Rake's Progress, Plate 8, 1735, and retouched by Hogarth in 1763 by adding the Britannia emblem[29][30]
In 1731, Hogarth completed the earliest of his series of moral works, a body of work that led to wide recognition. The collection of six scenes was entitledA Harlot's Progress and appeared first as paintings (now lost)[31] before being published as engravings.[32]A Harlot's Progress depicts the fate of a country girl who begins prostituting – the six scenes are chronological, starting with a meeting with abawd and ending with a funeral ceremony that follows the character's death fromvenereal disease.[33]
The inaugural series was an immediate success and was followed in 1733–1735 by the sequelA Rake's Progress.[34][35] The second instalment consisted of eight pictures that depicted the reckless life of Tom Rakewell, the son of a rich merchant, who spends all of his money on luxurious living, services from prostitutes, and gambling – the character's life ultimately ends inBethlem Royal Hospital. The original paintings ofA Harlot's Progress were destroyed in the fire atFonthill House in 1755; the oil paintings ofA Rake's Progress (1733–34) are displayed in the gallery room atSir John Soane's Museum, London, UK.[36]
When the success ofA Harlot's Progress andA Rake's Progress resulted in numerous pirated reproductions by unscrupulous printsellers, Hogarth lobbied inparliament for greater legal control over the reproduction of his and other artists' work. The result was theEngravers' Copyright Act (known as 'Hogarth's Act'), which became law on 25 June 1735 and was the first copyright law to deal with visual works as well as the first to recognise the authorial rights of an individual artist.[37]
In 1743–1745, Hogarth painted the six pictures ofMarriage A-la-Mode (National Gallery, London),[38] a pointed skewering of upper-class 18th-century society. An engraved version of the same series, produced by French engravers, appeared in 1745.[39][40] This moralistic warning shows the miserable tragedy of an ill-considered marriage for money. This is regarded by many as his finest project and may be among his best-planned story serials.
Marital ethics were the topic of much debate in 18th-century Britain. The many marriages of convenience and their attendant unhappiness came in for particular criticism, with a variety of authors taking the view that love was a much sounder basis for marriage. Hogarth here painted a satire – a genre that by definition has a moral point to convey – of a conventional marriage within the English upper class. All the paintings were engraved and the series achieved wide circulation in print form. The series, which is set in a Classical interior, shows the story of the fashionable marriage of Viscount Squanderfield, the son of bankrupt Earl Squander, to the daughter of a wealthy but miserly city merchant, starting with the signing of a marriage contract at the Earl's grand house and ending with the murder of the son by his wife's lover and the suicide of the daughter after her lover is hanged atTyburn for murdering her husband.
This famous set of pictures contains the most important and highly wrought of the Hogarth comedies. The care and method with which the moral grounds of these pictures are laid is as remarkable as the wit and skill of the observing and dexterous artist. He has to describe the negotiations for a marriage pending between the daughter of a rich citizen Alderman and young Lord Viscount Squanderfield, the dissipated son of a gouty old Earl ... The dismal end is known. My lord draws upon the counsellor, who kills him, and is apprehended while endeavouring to escape. My lady goes back perforce to the Alderman of the City, and faints upon reading Counsellor Silvertongue's dying speech at Tyburn (place of execution in old London), where the counsellor has been 'executed for sending his lordship out of the world. Moral: don't listen to evil silver-tongued counsellors; don't marry a man for his rank, or a woman for her money; don't frequent foolish auctions and masquerade balls unknown to your husband; don't have wicked companions abroad and neglect your wife, otherwise you will be run through the body, and ruin will ensue, and disgrace, and Tyburn.[41]
Industry and Idleness Plate 1, The Fellow 'Prentices at their Looms
In the twelve prints ofIndustry and Idleness (1747), Hogarth shows the progression in the lives of twoapprentices, one of whom is dedicated and hard working, while the other, who is idle, commits crime and is eventually executed. This shows the work ethic ofProtestant England, where those who worked hard were rewarded, such as the industrious apprentice who becomesSheriff (plate 8),Alderman (plate 10), and finally theLord Mayor of London in the last plate in the series.[42]
The idle apprentice, who begins "at play in the church yard" (plate 3), holes up "in a Garrett with a Common Prostitute" after turninghighwayman (plate 7) and "executed at Tyburn" (plate 11). The idle apprentice is sent to thegallows by the industrious apprentice himself. For each plate, there is at least one passage from the Bible at the bottom, mostly from theBook of Proverbs, such as for the first plate:
"Industry and Idleness, shown here, 'Proverbs Ch:10 Ver:4 The hand of the diligent maketh rich.'"[42]
Later prints of significance include his pictorial warning of the consequences of alcoholism inBeer Street andGin Lane (1751).[43] Hogarth engravedBeer Street to show a happy city drinking the 'good' beverage,English beer, in contrast toGin Lane, in which the effects of drinking gin are shown – as a more potent liquor, gin caused more problems for society.[44]
There had been a sharp increase in the popularity of gin at this time, which was called the 'Gin Craze.' It started in the early 18th century, after a series of legislative actions in the late 17th century impacted the importation and manufacturing of alcohol in London. Among these, were theProhibition of 1678, which barred popular French brandy imports, and the forced disbandment, in 1690, of theLondon Guild of Distillers,[45] whose members had previously been the only legal manufacturers of alcohol, leading to an increase in the production and then consumption of domestic gin.[46]
InBeer Street, people are shown as healthy, happy and prosperous, while inGin Lane, they are scrawny, lazy and careless. The woman at the front ofGin Lane, who lets her baby fall to its death, echoes the tale ofJudith Dufour, who strangled her baby so she could sell its clothes for gin money.[47] The prints were published in support of theGin Act 1751.
Hogarth's friend, the magistrateHenry Fielding, may have enlisted Hogarth to help with propaganda for the Gin Act;Beer Street andGin Lane were issued shortly after his workAn Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, and Related Writings, and addressed the same issues.[48]
Other prints were his outcry against inhumanity inThe Four Stages of Cruelty (published 21 February 1751), in which Hogarth depicts the cruel treatment of animals which he saw around him and suggests what will happen to people who carry on in this manner. In the first print, there are scenes of boys torturing dogs, cats and other animals. It centers around a poorly dressed boy committing a violent act of torture upon a dog, while being pleaded with to stop, and offered food, by another well-dressed boy. A boy behind them has graffitied ahanged stickman figure upon a wall, with the name "Tom Nero" underneath, and is pointing to this dog torturer.[42]
The second shows Tom Nero has grown up to become aHackney coach driver. His coach has overturned with a heavy load and his horse is lying on the ground, having broken its leg. He is beating it with the handle of his whip; its eye severely wounded. Other people around him are seen abusing their work animals and livestock, and a child is being run over by the wheel of adray, as thedrayman dozes off on the job.[42]
In the third print, Tom is shown to be a murderer, surrounded by a mob of accusers. The woman he has apparently killed is lying on the ground, brutally slain, with a trunk and sack of stolen goods near by. One of the accusers holds a letter from the woman to Tom, speaking of how wronging her mistress upsets her conscience, but that she is resolved to do as he would have her, closing with: "I remain yours till death."[42]
The fourth, titledThe Reward of Cruelty, shows Tom's withering corpse being publicly dissected by scientists after his execution by hanging; a noose still around his neck. The dissection reflects theMurder Act 1751, which allowed for the public dissection of criminals who had been hanged for murder.[42]
Hogarth was also a popularportrait painter. In 1745, he painted actorDavid Garrick asRichard III,[49] for which he was paid £200, "which was more", he wrote, "than any English artist ever received for a single portrait." With this picture Hogarth established the genre of theatrical portraiture as a distinctively British kind of history painting.[50] In 1746, a sketch ofSimon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, afterwards beheaded on Tower Hill, had an exceptional success when turned into an etching.[51]
For a long period, during the mid-18th century, Hogarth tried to achieve the status of ahistory painter, but did not earn much respect in this field. The painter, and later founder of theRoyal Academy of Arts,Joshua Reynolds, was highly critical of Hogarth's style and work. According to art historianDavid Bindman, inDr Johnson's serial of essays for London'sUniversal Chronicle,The Idler, the three essays written by Reynolds for the months of September to November 1759 are directed at Hogarth.[57]
Whereas theIdler essay no. 76, which attacks a connoisseur's "servile attention to minute exactness", seems to be more likely a response to the Hogarth supporter, Benjamin Ralph and his book,The School of Raphael (published in May 1759),[58] in theIdler essay no. 79, Reynolds questions Hogarth's notion of the imitation of nature as "the obvious sense, that objects are represented naturally when they have such relief that they seem real." Reynolds rejected "this kind of imitation", favouring the "grand style of painting" which avoids "minute attention" to the visible world.[57] In Reynolds'Discourse XIV, he grants Hogarth has "extraordinary talents", but reproaches him for "very imprudently, or rather presumptuously, attempt[ing] the great historical style."[59]
Writer, art historian and politician,Horace Walpole, was also critical of Hogarth as a history painter, but did find value in his satirical prints.[60]
Back home, he immediately executed a painting of the subject in which he unkindly represented his enemies, the Frenchmen, as cringing, emaciated and superstitious people, while an enormous sirloin of beef arrives, destined for the English inn as a symbol of British prosperity and superiority. He claimed to have painted himself into the picture in the left corner sketching the gate, with a "soldier's hand upon my shoulder", running him in.[66]
Hogarth wrote and published his ideas of artistic design in his bookThe Analysis of Beauty (1753).[76] In it, he professes to define the principles of beauty and grace which he, a real child ofRococo, saw realized in serpentine lines (theLine of Beauty).[77] By some of Hogarth's adherents, the book was praised as a fine deliverance upon aesthetics; by his enemies and rivals, its obscurities and minor errors were made the subject of endless ridicule and caricature.[78] For instance,Paul Sandby produced several caricatures against Hogarth's treatise.[79] Hogarth wrote also a manuscript calledApology for Painters (c. 1761)[80] and unpublished "autobiographical notes".[81]
Hogarth lived in an age when artwork became increasingly commercialized, being viewed in shop windows,taverns, and public buildings, and sold inprintshops. Old hierarchies broke down, and new forms began to flourish: theballad opera, thebourgeois tragedy, and especially, a new form offiction called thenovel with which authors such asHenry Fielding had great success. Therefore, by that time, Hogarth hit on a new idea: "painting and engraving modern moral subjects ... to treat my subjects as a dramatic writer; my picture was my stage", as he himself remarked in his manuscript notes.
He drew from the highly moralizingProtestant tradition of Dutchgenre painting, and the very vigorous satirical traditions of the Englishbroadsheet and other types of popular print. In England the fine arts had little comedy in them before Hogarth. His prints were expensive, and remained so until early 19th-century reprints brought them to a wider audience.
When analysing the work of the artist as a whole,Ronald Paulson says, "InA Harlot's Progress, every single plate but one is based onDürer's images of the story of theVirgin and the story of thePassion." In other works, he parodiesLeonardo da Vinci'sLast Supper. According to Paulson, Hogarth is subverting the religious establishment and the orthodox belief in an immanentGod who intervenes in the lives of people and producesmiracles.
Hogarth was aDeist, a believer in a God who created the universe but takes no direct hand in the lives of his creations. Thus, as a "comic history painter", he often poked fun at the old-fashioned, "beaten" subjects of religious art in his paintings and prints. Hogarth also rejectedLord Shaftesbury's then-current ideal of theclassical Greek male in favour of the living, breathing female. He said, "Who but a bigot, even to theantiques, will say that he has not seen faces and necks, hands and arms in living women, that even the GrecianVenus doth but coarsely imitate."
Sir James saw the match as unequal, as Hogarth was a rather obscure artist at the time. However, when Hogarth started on his series of moral prints,A Harlot's Progress, some of the initial paintings were placed either in Sir James' drawing room or dining room, through the conspiring of Jane and her mother, in the hopes of reconciling him with the couple. When he saw them, he inquired as to the artist's name and, upon hearing it, replied: "Very well; the man who can produce such representations as these, can also maintain a wife without aportion."[83][84] However, he soon after relented, becoming more generous to, and living in harmony with the couple until his death.[85][86]
Hogarth was initiated as aFreemason before 1728 in the Lodge at the Hand and Apple Tree Tavern, Little Queen Street, and later belonged to the Carrier Stone Lodge and the Grand Stewards' Lodge; the latter still possesses the 'Hogarth Jewel' which Hogarth designed for the Lodge's Master to wear.[87] Today the original is in storage and a replica is worn by the Master of the Lodge. Freemasonry was a theme in some of Hogarth's work, most notably 'Night', the fourth in the quartet of paintings (later released as engravings) collectively entitled theFour Times of the Day.
His main home was inLeicester Square (then known as Leicester Fields), but he bought a country retreat inChiswick in 1749, the house now known asHogarth's House and preserved as a museum, and spent time there for the rest of his life.[88][89]The Hogarths had no children, although they fostered foundling children. He was a founding Governor of theFoundling Hospital.
On 25 October 1764, Hogarth was conveyed from his villa in Chiswick to his home in Leicester Fields, in weak condition. He had been in a weakened state for a while by this time, but was said to be in a cheerful mood and was even still working—with some help; doing more retouches onThe Bench on this same day.[90] On 26 October, he received a letter fromBenjamin Franklin and wrote up a rough draft in reply.[91]
Before going to bed that evening, he had boasted about eating a pound of beefsteaks for dinner, and reportedly looked more robust than he had in a while at this time.[92] However, when he went to bed, he suddenly began vomiting; something that caused him to ring his bell so forcefully that it broke. Hogarth died around two hours later,[93][94] in the arms of his servant, Mrs Mary Lewis.[91][95]John Nichols claimed that he died of ananeurysm, which he said took place in the "chest."[93][94][92] Horace Walpole claimed that he died of "adropsy of his breast."[12]
Mrs Lewis, who stayed on with Jane Hogarth in Leicester Fields,[92] was the only non-familial person acknowledged financially in Hogarth's will and was left £100 (approximately £15,236.79 in 2024[96]) for her "faithful services."[91][97]
Hogarth's works were a direct influence onJohn Collier, who was known as the "Lancashire Hogarth".[101] The spread of Hogarth's prints throughout Europe, together with the depiction of popular scenes from his prints in faked Hogarth prints, influenced Continental book illustration through the 18th and early 19th centuries, especially in Germany and France. He also influenced many caricaturists of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Hogarth's influence lives on today as artists continue to draw inspiration from his work.
Hogarth's House inChiswick, west London, is now a museum;[103] the majorroad junction next to it is named theHogarth Roundabout. In 2014 both Hogarth's House and the Foundling Museum held special exhibitions to mark the 250th anniversary of his death.[104][105]In 2019,Sir John Soane's Museum, which owns bothThe Rake's Progress andThe Humours of an Election, held an exhibition which assembled all Hogarth's series of paintings, and his series of engravings, in one place for the first time.[106]
Stanley Kubrick based the cinematography of his 1975 period drama film,Barry Lyndon, on several Hogarth paintings.
InRoger Michell's 2003 filmThe Mother, starringAnne Reid andDaniel Craig, the protagonists visit Hogarth's tomb during their first outing together. They read aloud the poem inscribed there, and their shared admiration of Hogarth helps to affirm their connection with one another.
^According to Elizabeth Einberg, "by the time he died in October 1764 he had left so indelible a mark on the history of British painting that the term 'Hogarthian' remains instantly comprehensible even today as a valid description of a wry, satirical perception of the human condition."Hogarth the Painter, London: Tate Gallery, 1997, p. 17.
^Ronald Paulson,Hogarth, vol. 1: The 'Modern Moral Subject', 1697–1732 (New Brunswick 1991), pp. 26–37.
^Bernd W. Krysmanski,Hogarth's Hidden Parts: Satiric Allusion, Erotic Wit, Blasphemous Bawdiness and Dark Humour in Eighteenth-Century English Art (Hildesheim, Zurich and New York: Georg Olms 2010).
^Lamb, Charles,The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, E.V. Lucas Publishing, 1811, Vol. 1, p. 82, "On the genius and character of Hogarth".
^Ronald Paulson,Hogarth, vol. 1: The 'Modern Moral Subject' (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991), pp. 155-157.
^See Ronald Paulson,Hogarth's Graphic Works (3rd edition, London 1989), no. 43. For more details, see David Dabydeen,Hogarth, Walpole and Commercial Britain (London 1987).
^Cruickshank, Dan (2010).London's Sinful Secret: The Bawdy History and Very Public Passions of London's Georgian Age. Macmillan. pp. 19–20.ISBN1429919566.
^For the paintings, see Einberg,William Hogarth: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, nos. 74–81. For the engravings, see Paulson,Hogarth's Graphic Works, 3rd edition, nos. 132–139.
^Robert L. S. Cowley,Marriage A-la-Mode: a re-view of Hogarth's narrative art (Manchester University Press, 1983); Judy Egerton,Hogarth's 'Marriage A-la-Mode', London: The National Gallery 1997.
^Geoff Quilley, "The Analysis of Deceit: Sandby's Satires against Hogarth", in John Bonehill and Stephen Daniels (eds.),Paul Sandby: Picturing Britain, exh. cat., London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2009, 38-47.
^Michael Kitson, "Hogarth's 'Apology for Painters'",Walpole Society, 41 (1966-1968), pp. 46-111.
^William Hogarth,The Analysis of Beauty, With the Rejected Passages from the Manuscript Drafts and Autobiographical Notes, edited by Joseph Burke (Oxford, 1955), pp. 201-31.
^Hignett, Tim (1991).Milnrow & Newhey: A Lancashire Legacy. Littleborough: George Kelsall Publishing. p. 39.ISBN0-946571-19-8.
^Mariacristina Cavecchi, "Hogarth's Progress in Nick Dear'sThe Art of Success," in Caroline Patey, Cynthia E. Roman, Georges Letissier (eds.),Enduring Presence: William Hogarth's British and European Afterlives, vol. 1 (Peter Lang, 2021), 183-204.
Bernd W. Krysmanski,Hogarth's Hidden Parts: Satiric Allusion, Erotic Wit, Blasphemous Bawdiness and Dark Humour in Eighteenth-Century English Art (Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Olms-Verlag, 2010ISBN978-3487144719)
Johann Joachim Eschenburg,Über William Hogarth und seine Erklärer, ed. Till Kinzel (Hanover: Wehrhahn, 2013ISBN978-3-8652-5347-7)
Cynthia Ellen Roman, ed.,Hogarth's Legacy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016)
Elizabeth Einberg,William Hogarth: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven and London, Yale University Press for Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2016)
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