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William Hogarth was an English painter and printmaker who poignantly commented the English society of the eighteenth century with biting satire. The career and life of Hogarth were as unusual as his prints.
William was born as the son of a shopkeeper (his mother) and a schoolmaster and publisher. The youth of William was overshadowed by the chronic financial problems of his father, who was even imprisoned because of his debts. This humiliating experience formed Hogarth for the rest of his life.
Hogarth started an apprenticeship as a silversmith in 1714, but never finished it. He then tried his luck as an independent engraver for copper plates. His early commissions were for cards, book illustrations and single prints. In 1720, he registered at the John Vanderbank Art Academy. Around 1726 or earlier, he was taught painting by James Thornhill whose daughter he later married. He earned some reputation for theater decoration paintings.
Hogarth experienced his first big financial success with A Harlot's Progress, a series of paintings from which he produced engravings in 1732. Only the engravings survived. The paintings were lost in a fire in 1755.
A Harlot's Progress is a set of 6 prints about the hapless life of a prostitute. It was a completely new kind of genre prints that were referred as moral history subjects.
After the big success of A Harlot's Progress, Hogarth published a male counterpart series, A Rake's Progress - a story in eight plates showing the decline of a promising young man into a life of drinking and immoral behavior.
In 1743, the painting series Marriage à la Mode was completed. It is considered his masterpiece. In Marriage à la Mode Hogarth turned his satire on the follies of the upper classes. The theme of this series is about marriage for money. Although the prints of Marriage à la Mode sold well, the paintings did not. Therefore all prints designed afterwards, were created exclusively as print designs without any painted counterparts.
In 1747 followed the series Industry and Idleness, a moral story of an idle and an industrious apprentice in twelve plates.
In 1753 Hogarth wrote his book The Analysis of Beauty, a wrap-up of his artistic and esthetic principles.
Hogarth was a very controversial and individual character. Driven by a sense for justice, he missed no chance to get into a quarrel with his contemporaries. His most hated enemy was the British politician John Wilkes, whom he had ridiculed in one of his engravings. William Hogarth died on October 26, 1764.
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| These two prints were designed as illustrations for Hogarth's aesthetic treatise The Analysis of Beauty. Sold separately from the book, because of their comic and serious interests, they were intended as independent collector's items to be appreciated in their own right and as illustrations to be bound into the Analysis. | |||||||||
 (click image to enlarge— Darvill's electronic watermark does not appear on actual engraving) Analysis of Beauty ANALYSIS OF BEAUTY (PLATE I) This print depicts a statuary yard in which Hogarth has collected the various artifacts he wishes to comment on. The scene is believed to have been inpired by Socrates' discussion of beauty stimulated by the art objects in the yard of his friend Clito; the dialogue was translated from Xenophon's Memorabilia by Dr. Morell, a friend of the engraver. The yard contains the dignified classical sculptures known to the age with a miscellaneous and often comical assortment of modern art objects. In the center stands the Medicean Venus. To the right are statues of Julius Caesar hanging from a pulley and Apollo Belvedere. A short, overdressed Brutus stands on one side of Apollo over the falling Caesar; on the other side another overdressed figure clad as a judge sits with his foot on the head of a cherub. A second putto with a gallows in its hand cries at the judge's feet. The Laocoön stands behind the Venus; on either side of the Venus lie a graceful sphinx and the satyr Silenus reclining on a wineskin. In the foreground rests "Michaelangelo's torso" by "Apollonius, son of Nestor." Beneath the Farnese Hercules a dancing master attempts to correct the posture of Antinous. Under two statuettes of Isis is another Hercules. The boot and the anatomical sketches of the three legs are balanced by the highly symmetrical figures (by Albrecht Dürer and G. P. Lomazzo) on the right. Above the scene, a serpentine line wound around a cone, Hogarth's "Line of Beauty," stands as the keystone to his aesthetic theory. It appears in the figures in the central scene and in the drawings that border the print (most of which illustrate the points in the Analysis). [Excerpts this page from Engravings by Hogarth, edited by Sean Shesgreen, (Dover 1973).] |
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 (click image to enlarge— Darvill's electronic watermark does not appear on actual engraving) Analysis of Beauty ANALYSIS OF BEAUTY (PLATE II) Adapted from a design as party of the Happy Marriage series, the engraver's complement to Marriage à la Mode, this plate (which is usually said to represent the Wanstead Assembly with the Earl of Tynley and his household) illustrates Hogarth's theory about the linear presentation of attitude and action:
In the right-hand corner of the print an exchange takes place which is typically Hogarthian in its self-contained, dramatic nature. To her displeasure a young wife or daughter is being compelled to leave the dance by a country squire (complete with dog) who points insistently to his watch. The girl accepts a letter from her lover as she dons her cloak. |
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Complete set of 2 full page plates Original Copperplate Engravings and Etchings from: London. Printed for Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, Paternoster Row $750 Please note: the shipping charge for these plates may need to be adjusted to account for a higher insurance value. (The US Postal Service's Internatonal Priority Mail only allows for $650 insurance to most countries, but service with higher insurance amounts is available at additional cost. Please enquire for service outside of the U.S.) If necessary, we will send you a secure electronic invoice for the additional amount. Please be sure to check your email. Thank you. |
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