Who is hogarth

Explore our Work. Our Work. Sustainably Made by Hogarth. See more. The casa of gifts Nespresso. To create a scaled, addressable content creation offering to help clients deliver audience-first, highly personalized and performing ad experiences to consumers.

Email Us Porto Alegre. Each employs numerous figures and a minute handling in the Dutch manner to present, in the former, crowds in the pursuit of greed, and, in the latter, the popularity of meretricious foreign entertainment, like masquerades, harlequin plays, and Italian operas, while English classics are carted away as waste paper.

His small illustrations to Samuel Butler's mock-heroic Hudibras , published in but executed earlier ibid. The large Hudibras series was a work of high ambition, and it reflects an awareness of the wider artistic world. Hogarth claimed later that even as an apprentice ' the painting of St Pauls and gree[n]wich hospital … were during this time runing in my head ' Hogarth , Autobiographical notes, , referring here to the enormous schemes for the decoration of the dome of St Paul's and for the Greenwich Hospital by the English-born painter Sir James Thornhill , who held the office of sergeant-painter to the king.

Hogarth had enrolled at the St Martin's Lane Academy, London , in , and at the drawing school run by Thornhill in Covent Garden probably shortly after its opening in November It is possible that Masquerades and Operas was already an attempt to side with Thornhill in his struggles with the leaders of the new taste for Palladian architecture, the earl of Burlington and the painter William Kent , for the latter is lampooned by being placed on top of a pediment with figures of Michelangelo and Raphael in adoration beneath.

Hogarth must have received some kind of instruction from Thornhill in the mechanics of painting; his broad handling of the brush and use of colour make his debt clear. Very few works can be attributed confidently to Hogarth before , when he made the first versions of his painting of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera , first performed that year. The first three versions, probably all finished before the end of Birmingham City Art Gallery; priv.

CBA; Tate collection are of real accomplishment. They exhibit a satirical resonance and topicality beyond Gay's opera by incorporating into the composition recognizable members of the fashionable audience. On the basis of this success he moved into the demanding genre of the conversation piece, which required delicacy of touch, a mastery of elegant gesture, and an ability to set figures in a convincing space. It is scarcely credible that an artist could have mastered such a specialized field so quickly, but Hogarth's ability was immediately noted by the astute chronicler George Vertue , who remarked on the painting of the Wollaston family ; priv.

Thornhill as well as a painter was member of parliament for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, and a supporter of the Walpole government. Hogarth quickly exploited his new family connections, and it was probably through Thornhill that he obtained a commission in for a painting of the parliamentary inquiry, led by James Oglethorpe , into conditions in the Fleet and other prisons NPG.

Hogarth and Thornhill were friendly with John Huggins , who had sold the patent of the Fleet as late as August to his deputy, Thomas Bambridge. It is possible that the bestial characterization of Bambridge , also evident in the oil sketch in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, is evidence of an attempt by Hogarth to exonerate Huggins.

Several of those depicted in the painting became patrons of Hogarth ; Viscount Malpas, later earl of Cholmondeley , Sir Robert Walpole's son-in-law, commissioned a family conversation ; Houghton Hall, Norfolk , and the large painting of a performance of Dryden's The Indian Emperor, or, The Conquest of Mexico priv.

Hogarth's circle of patrons was largely, though not exclusively, within the court or government; he was conspicuously ignored by landowning families influenced by the Burlington circle. Vertue reports that the earl of Burlington used his influence to deprive Thornhill of commissions, and his son-in-law of the privilege of painting the royal family:. William the Duke had sat to him for one. This also has been stopt. So that he can't proceed.

By the early s Hogarth had none the less achieved a solid position in the world. In addition to a thriving practice as a painter of portrait groups he had some success with humorous satirical paintings, such as The Denunciation National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin and The Christening priv.

His studio was in Covent Garden before he moved to Leicester Fields in ; it was something of a meeting-place for men about town, and he clearly used them as an audience to try out different kinds of painting. He was tiring of conversation pictures, for ' that manner of Painting was not sufficiently paid to do every thing my family requird ' Hogarth , Autobiographical notes, Vertue tells us that he ' began a small picture of a common harlot, supposd to dwell in drewry lane.

In discussion with visitors to the studio. Hogarth's high-minded version in retrospect of this momentous change in direction was that he ' turn[ed] my thoughts to still a more new way of proceeding, viz painting and Engraving moder[n] moral Subject[s] a Field unbroke up in any Country or any age ' Hogarth , Autobiographical notes, The first, A Harlot's Progress , was made up of six paintings des. A Harlot's Progress tells the sordid story of a country girl, M.

The horror and squalor of the story are mitigated by a fascinating profusion of incident, topical references, and satirical humour directed towards clergymen, moral crusaders like Sir John Gonson , doctors, and prostitutes themselves, heedless of their fate.

The story is told as if each painting or engraving is the act of a play or chapter in a novel. No verbal narrative is given even on the engravings, though verbal signs in the form of notices and discarded letters and wrappers clarify the action in most scenes.

Almost every scene has a precise location so that one could plot the episodes of the harlot's rise and fall on a map of London. The success of the engravings was extraordinary, and it can be measured as much in the piracies and adaptations, in the form of plays, pamphlets, fans, and china, as in the number of impressions sold. According to Vertue :. Hogarth , now a celebrity, published in March an engraving that was imitated more than any other of his prints: Midnight Modern Conversation Paulson , Graphic Works , no.

At the same time he was working on a second series, A Rake's Progress ibid. The series of eight paintings Sir John Soane's Museum, London was probably completed by the middle of , but the artist delayed publication of the engravings, for which he was assisted by the French engraver Louis Gerard Scotin , to allow for an act of parliament to protect his copyright, that he had initiated through well-placed friends, to become law on 25 June Because of the delay piracies actually came out before the publication of A Rake's Progress , and the effect of the act was to deter slavish copies, but not in the end to prevent imitations, of which there were a great many.

The rake, Tom Rakewell, is a male counterpart of the harlot, but as the son of a miserly financier he is a member of the middling orders, pursuing social advancement with as much vigour as he pursues sensual pleasure.

These are not the men of virtue who live up to the ideals of their station in life, but those who use wealth and social position for selfish ends. He then receives petitioners at a levee, ranging from an opera composer and a dancing-master to a jockey and bodyguard, as a line of others queue for an audience scene 2.

He spends a riotous evening in a sordid brothel in Drury Lane, where he is deftly deprived of his watch by a prostitute scene 3. While being carried in a sedan chair towards a royal reception at St James's Palace he is arrested for debt, only saved by the fortuitous arrival of Sarah Young, who offers her savings scene 4. The remaining four scenes show the rake's downward descent.

He attempts vainly to regain his fortune by marrying a rich, deformed heiress scene 5 , and by gambling at table scene 6 , but he is confined to the Fleet prison, now losing his sanity scene 7 , ending his days in Bedlam among richly characterized lunatics, lamented only by Sarah Young scene 8. The richness of content and wit of A Rake's Progress surpassed even A Harlot's Progress , confirming Hogarth's fame, and increasing his fortune.

He was now virtually independent of the market place he had so astutely exploited, in a position to take on other challenges. His first concern seems to have been to take on the mantle of Sir James Thornhill , who had died on 4 May By a masterly stroke he was granted a large-scale wall-painting commission at St Bartholomew's Hospital, becoming a governor, by offering to paint free of charge two walls in the entrance hall. These had already been assigned to the gifted Venetian painter Jacopo Amigoni , a painter who had taken away a major commission from Thornhill at Moor Park, Hertfordshire.

Hogarth thus gained a major public place for his first attempt at history painting, avenged his late father-in-law, and established himself as a gentleman of public spirit. This manoeuvre gave rise to Vertue's famous remark of Hogarth , ' a good Front and a Scheemist ' Vertue , Note books , 3.

The result is wonderful and absurd in equal measure; the figure of Christ in The Pool of Bethesda is inept, but the painting is redeemed by the varied group of the sick and the lame waiting to be cured.

Though Vertue tells us that ' as to this great work of painting it is by every one judged to be more than coud be expected of him ', it left him exposed to ridicule in later life, providing evidence that he was ignorant of painting's capacity to elevate the mind.

Two projects of the late s built as much on the painting Southwark Fair ; priv. Southwark Fair presents a dense panorama of London street life, contrasting the insubstantial, precarious, and idealized life of the theatre with the equally theatrical life of the streets.

This concern with illusion and reality led towards two projects, both published at the same time in May the Times of Day series of four paintings Morning and Night , Upton House, Warwickshire; and Noon and Evening , priv.

The four scenes Morning , Noon , Evening , and Night are governed neither by a narrative nor common characters; nor are they set in one part of London. Nor are they confined to one season; Morning takes place on a winter's day, Evening on a warm summer's evening. They are unified by the contrast of order and disorder in urban life, carefully staged by the artist through visual anecdotes. Each scene is animated by accidental conjunctions, some setting off a change of consequences, comic and pathetic.

Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn plays humorously upon the discomforts of a group of female players forced to prepare for a rural performance in a barn strewn with stage machinery and props. It offers a profound meditation upon the disjunction between the mundanity of real life and the mythological subject of the play, The Devil to Pay in Heaven , which requires the actresses to play Olympian gods and goddesses.

Hogarth entered the field of individual portraiture in the late s and early s. His portraits of this period deliberately challenge the French grand-manner portrait and those of Thomas Hudson , but he never became a professional in the sense of developing a large studio and using drapery painters.

Hogarth's decision to take up grand-manner portraiture was provoked by the success of the French painter J. Van Loo , who arrived in London in late According to Vertue ' the English painters have great uneasines[s] it has much blemishd their reputation—and business ' Vertue , Note books , 3. Hogarth's reply in effect was the magnificent portrait of Captain Coram , painted in for the Foundling Hospital Foundling Hospital, London. Though often seen as essentially English, it derives from French examples, combining a composition derived from Hyacinthe Rigaud's portrait of Samuel Bernard Bindman , Hogarth , fig.

The success of the portrait seems to have inspired Hogarth to take on more such commissions, mainly from friends. He applied the grand manner unusually to a female sitter, in the three-quarter length of Mary Edwards ; Frick collection, New York. She is shown as a great chatelaine, the speech at her right elbow by Queen Elizabeth I , the busts of the latter and King Alfred in the background, the faithful dog and her direct gaze emphasizing her regal stout-heartedness.

Other portraits of this period combine the monumental with the genial, and some have a distinctively demotic rather than aristocratic character, as if Hogarth were developing an alternative mode from Van Dyck and French portrait painters.

The portraits of George Arnold c. CBA , among a number of others, are notable for their direct gaze and vivid expression. He was also capable of bestowing a papal dignity on two prominent ecclesiastics: Benjamin Hoadly , bishop of Winchester , and Thomas Herring , archbishop of Canterbury —7 both Tate collection. Hogarth made a number of portraits of children in this period, most notably the large group of the Graham children ; National Gallery, London. It is a conversation piece on a grand scale, the fleetingness of childhood suggested by the precarious stability of the composition, the distinctive behaviour of each child according to age, and the rich fabric of allusion to the passing of time.

This portrait belongs to a period of return to portraiture, announced in February , as a relief from the rigours of the Election series and dealing with engravers. Though some portraits of this period, like David Garrick and his Wife ; Royal Collection , are highly finished, Hogarth aimed also to produce a simplified type of portrait, based on few sittings and minimal trappings, like those of such friends and associates as Samuel Martin c. Also probably of this period is the densely painted and firmly characterized group of six heads known, on early but not conclusive authority, as Hogarth's Servants c.

They are ' character heads ' made from observation, illustrating different ages, probably intended as studies, of a similar date and purpose to the brilliantly free sketch The Shrimp Girl National Gallery, London. In the late s and early s Hogarth began to present himself as the leader of a national school of painting, speaking out for British artists against the assumption of connoisseurs whose taste had been formed on the grand tour that only paintings by the great Italian masters were worthy of serious consideration.

Under the name Britophil , Hogarth wrote to the St James's Evening Post of 7—9 June defending Thornhill and attacking the importing of ' shiploads of dead Christs , Holy Families, Madona's , and other dismal dark subjects, neither entertaining nor ornamental '. His claims to a national role were indirectly bolstered by the playwright and novelist Henry Fielding , who in the preface to Joseph Andrews of paid Hogarth the singular compliment of claiming his art to be the basis of his own theory of the novel and its purposes, arguing that his moral engravings were ' calculated more to serve the Cause of Virtue, and for the preservation of Mankind, than all the Folios of Morality which have ever been written '.

This endorsement was important in providing a theoretical underpinning for Hogarth's enterprise. Fielding's further claim that Hogarth was a ' Comic History Painter ', rather than a practitioner of ' Caricatura ' or burlesque, defined his art as socially useful, distinctively English, and with a wide popular appeal. Hogarth claimed in a newspaper advertisement that the theme was ' a Variety of Modern Occurrences in High-Life ', and that he had taken pains to avoid ' the least Objection to the Decency or elegancy of the whole work ' ibid.

The paintings are indeed elegant in composition, painterly in handling and in the interaction of the figures, but this elegance is rendered superficial by the moral hypocrisy of those who pursue the high life for its own sake, and their heedlessness towards those who fall victim to it, like the earl's son and merchant's daughter, the subject of the original marriage agreement.

This takes place in the old master-bedecked house in the West End of the elderly earl of Squander, himself the very picture of aristocratic arrogance and fecklessness, in debt from building a preposterous double-porticoed Palladian town house probably a stroke at the earl of Burlington scene 1.

The merchant is equally culpable, seeking to gain social advancement by buying it rather than earning it by admirable conduct. Their children, the young viscount and the merchant's daughter, studiously ignore each other, the former an overdressed, self-admiring fop, the latter, weeping and weak-willed, open to the covert courtship of the lawyer Silvertongue.

The story is of the mutual alienation of the couple, predetermined by the circumstances of their marriage, and their separate paths to destruction, as they each pursue the characteristic vices of their social class.

The young viscount, who becomes an earl on the death of his father, pursues sexual dissipation scenes 2 and 3 , while the new countess acts out the role of a great lady, holding a levee in the French manner scene 4 , entertaining an even more grotesque company of hangers-on than the rake, and arranging an assignation with Silvertongue.

The earl dies in a duel after surprising the lovers in a private room in a bagnio in Covent Garden, but the countess, surprisingly but movingly, stays with her dying husband rather than fleeing with her lover out of the window scene 5. Her own end is depicted in the last scene scene 6 , where she dies in her father's house in the City, within sight of London Bridge.

This house, by contrast with the opulence of the earl's West End mansion, is a bare, miserly dwelling with vulgar Dutch paintings on the wall, of the kind Hogarth despised as much as the earl's Italian pictures.

It is perhaps not surprising that the posthumous revival of interest in Hogarth as a painter rather than an engraver should date from William Hazlitt's first opportunity to study the Marriage a-la-mode paintings at the British Institution exhibition in They are astonishing in the fluid confidence of their brushwork; they were clearly intended to stand in their own right as paintings, and not just act as vehicles for engraving.

The Foundling Hospital was founded by Captain Thomas Coram to rescue and train for military and domestic service, and manufacturing, children abandoned on the streets of London. Hogarth was involved in the hospital from the beginning, painting Captain Coram see above , and, realizing the hospital's potential as a public exhibiting space, he involved other artists in the venture.

By the end of the decade it was filled with portraits, landscape paintings, and sculpture by most of the best artists of the time: Thomas Gainsborough , Thomas Hudson , Allan Ramsay , Joshua Reynolds , John Michael Rysbrack , and Richard Wilson. The success of Moses Brought before Pharaoh's Daughter may have emboldened Hogarth to take on a more ambitious biblical subject in Paul before Felix , for Lincoln's Inn. Such a subject invited comparison not with Thornhill or visiting Italian painters but with Raphael , whose cartoons, then at Hampton Court, especially St Paul Preaching at Athens , provided the ultimate challenge to Hogarth's prowess in the elevated style.

In the event the monumental forms of Hogarth's painting are laboured and the faces approach caricature, but the drama and the overall colour harmony make it a convincing performance. Unfortunately Hogarth left himself open to ridicule by issuing in May a ticket for the engraving illustrated by a coarse and amusing etched parody of the subject, entitled Paul before Felix Burlesqued Paulson , Graphic Works , no.

The series tells the parallel stories of two apprentices, one insufferably virtuous and ambitious called Francis Goodchild, who works hard, marries his master's daughter, and rises to be lord mayor of London. Sorry, no image available. William Hogarth John Wilkes Esq.

On display at Tate Britain part of Hogarth and Europe. See all Artist as subject Left Right. Julian Trevelyan Scrapbook 14 December —[c. Film and audio Left Right. The Art of Comedy Is it okay to laugh in galleries and how have artists used humour in their work? Inspired by.

Late at Tate November: Behind the scenes. Power: Richard Thomas Join Tate's artist-educator Richard Thomas for a tour and candid discussion on the power behind the early art markets through ….

Writing London In conjunction with Hogarth, this creative writing workshop explores the urban environment as a source of artistic inspiration and production. Mark Hallet on Hogarth William Hogarth is recognised as the first great artistic chronicler of modern urban experience. William Hogarth is recognised as the first great …. Features Left Right. Art Term. Rococo Light, sensuous, intensely decorative French style developed in the early eighteenth century following death of Louis XIV and in reaction ….

Genre painting The term genre painting refers to paintings which depict scenes of everyday life. Engraving Engraving is a printmaking technique that involves making incisions into a metal plate which retain the ink and form the …. Conversation piece A conversation piece is an informal group portrait popular in the eighteenth century, small in scale and showing people — ….

Modern moral subject The modern moral subject is a type of painting that was invented by English artist William Hogarth — , which satirizes …. Portrait A portrait is a representation of a particular person.

Written to ….