William Hogarth

Hogarth (1697 - 1764)
-- Most popular English artist and engraver of his generation.

-- By April 1720, Hogarth was an engraver in his own right, at first engraving coats of arms, shop bills, and designing plates for booksellers.

--  In 1727, he was hired by Joshua Morris, a tapestry worker, to prepare a design for the Element 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. In 1757 he was appointed Serjeant Painter to the King.

Satire:

Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme (c.1721, published 1724)
The Lottery (1724);
The Mystery of Masonry brought to Light by the Gormogons (1724);
A Just View of the British Stage (1724);
Masquerades and Operas (1724). The latter is a satire on contemporary follies, such as the masquerades of the Swiss impresario John James Heidegger, the popular Italian opera singers, John Rich's pantomimes at Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the exaggerated popularity of Lord Burlington's protégé, the architect and painter William Kent.
The Large Masquerade Ticket.1727
The Fountaine Family (c.1730),
The Assembly at Wanstead House,
The House of Commons examining Bambridge,
A Midnight Modern Conversation (1733), 

Southwark Fair (1733),
The Sleeping Congregation (1736),
Before and After (1736),
Scholars at a Lecture (1736),

The Company of Undertakers (Consultation of Quacks) (1736): 

In the 18th eighteenth century, some of the most notable satirical portrayals of the medical profession came in the form of artistic renderings. William Hogarth skewered the profession, mockingly portraying physicians in "The Company of Undertakers" in 1737. The painting, framed with a black sash signifying a recent death, shows twelve portly physicians deep in thought, studying a flask of urine. Presiding over the consultation are three figures who turn out to be "Crazy Sally" Mapp (center), a well-known bonesetter, and two notorious quacks of the day, Joshua "Spot" Ward (left) and "Chevalier" John Taylor (right). By lumping professional physicians with the quacks and the bonesetter, Hogarth challenges the presumptions and pretensions that set the professionals and the quacks apart. Physicians in the 18th century were distinguished by their walking canes and stylish wigs—an appearance clearly appropriated by the quacks in the portrait. It is also not clear that any sort of superior education or training sets the professionals apart from the quacks—indeed in the eighteenth century, quack therapeutics were often less harmful to patients than professional therapeutics. The observer is left to conclude that consultation with either group will result in a request for the undertaker's services.

As the contrived heraldic rhetoric of this print's caption makes clear, it is a satirical representation of a coat-of-arms for the medical profession. The theme of the escutcheon is not recovery but death. The print is bordered in black like a mourning card; it has ominous crossbones in the bottom corners; and its motto "Et Plurima Mortis Imago" (And many an image of death).

The upper portion of the shield (the field "ermine" above the "nebulous" dividing line) shows three doctors, each with some obvious physical disorder. The center figure ("One Compleat Doctor") with the grim, thick-featured face wearing a clown's suit and a felt hat over a nightcap is cross-eyed. This masculine figure, said to represent Sarah Mapp, a well-known bone-setter of the time, points inarticulately to the human bone she is carrying as a cane. To the right stands a smiling, almost feminine-faced physician. He is supposed to portray Joshua Ward ("Spot Ward"), a doctor with a blood-colored birthmark on one side of his face—thus the shading. To the left stands a well-dressed oculist (his cane identifies his specialty) who has himself only one open eye, which stares erratically upward; he seems to wink ingratiatingly with the other. This figure is believed to represent John Taylor, a charlatan oculist.

Below these figures twelve more quacks huddle together. Nine smell the heads of their canes, which in the eighteenth century, contained disinfectant. Two stare into a urinal to determine the color of the contents. A third dips his finger into the urine itself to taste it. All wear sour, disaffected expressions.

 

The Distrest Poet (1736),

The Four Times of the Day (1738),

Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn (1738)




Moralizing Art:

The Harlot's Progress 1731 - The perils of whoredom

A Rake's Progress 1735 - Inherited wealth lost 

Marriage a-la-mode 1745

1 - The Marriage Settlement shows an arranged marriage between the son of bankrupt Earl Squanderfield and the daughter of a wealthy but miserly city merchant. Construction on the earl's new mansion, visible through the window, has stopped, and a usurer negotiates payment for further construction at the center table. The gouty earl proudly points to a picture of his family tree, rising from William the Conqueror. The son views himself in the mirror, showing where his interests in the matter lie. The distraught merchant's daughter is consoled by the lawyer Silvertongue while polishing her wedding ring. Even the faces on the walls appear to have misgivings. Two dogs chained to each other in the corner mirror the situation of the young couple.

2 - The Tête à Tête Shortly after the marriage, there are signs that the marriage has already begun to break down. The husband and wife appear uninterested in one another, amidst evidence of their separate overindulgences the night before. A small dog finds a lady's cap in the husband's coat pocket, indicating his adulterous ventures. A broken sword at his feet shows that he has been in a fight. The open posture of the wife also indicates unfaithfulness. As Hogarth once noted: "A lock of hair falling thus cross the temples ... has an effect too alluring to be strictly decent, as is very well known to the loose and lowest class of women."[3]The disarray of the house and the servant holding a stack of unpaid bills shows that the affairs of the household are a mess.
3 - The Inspection called The visit to the quack doctor by Hogart, shows the viscount (the earl's son) visiting a quack with a young prostitute. According to one interpretation, the viscount, unhappy with the mercury pills meant to cure his syphilis, demands a refund while the young prostitute next to him dabs an open sore on her mouth, an early sign of syphilis.
4 - The Toilette The old earl has died, so the son is now the new earl and his wife is the countess. The countess sits with her back to her guests, oblivious to them, as a servant attends to her toilette (grooming). The lawyer Silvertongue from the first painting is reclining next to the countess, suggesting the existence of an affair. This point is underlined by the child in front of the pair, pointing to the horns on the statue of Actaeon, a symbol of cuckoldry. Paintings in the background include the biblical story of Lot and his daughters, Jupiter and Io, and the rape of Ganymede. The Actaeon and several other figurines are seen marked for auction. Such paintings show the African, presumed to be untamed fetish-worshipper and hunter, now fashioned into an icon of courtly style.
5 - The Bagnio The new earl has caught his wife in a bagnio with her lover, the lawyer, and is fatally wounded. As she begs forgiveness from the stricken man, the murderer in his nightshirt makes a hasty exit through the window. A picture of a woman with a squirrel on her hand hanging behind the countess contains lewd undertones. Masks on the floor indicate that the couple have been at a masquerade.
6 - The Lady's Death The countess poisons herself in her grief and poverty-stricken widowhood, after her lover is hanged at Tyburn for murdering her husband. An old woman carrying her baby allows the child to give her a kiss, but the mark on the child's cheek and the caliper on her leg suggest that disease has been passed onto the next generation. The countess's father, whose miserly lifestyle is evident in the bare house, removes the wedding ring from her finger.




Industry & Idleness 1747 -

Parallel lives leading from the same start to opposite ends. Paulson suggests two: the plays "Eastward Hoe" (Revived after Hogarth's publication of these) and "The London Merchant", the latter containing the especially applicable quote that "business [is] the youth's best preservative from ill, as idleness [is] the worst of snares". He also suggests that Hogarth already had the idea when he painted "Hudibras and the Lawyer" with its 2 (industrious and idle) clerks.

Anti-French Art:
The Gate of Calais (1748)

The painting takes a viewpoint under an archway in the main outer wall of Calais. The scene within centres around a sirloin of beef destined for the English tavern, the Lion d'Argent, carried by a chef who stands out in his bright white apron and cap. The French soldiers, dressed in rags and forced to eat their watery soupe maigre, gather round licking their lips. Two soldiers in sabots can be seen carrying a cauldron of the grey unappetising soup. The Franciscan friar who greedily rubs his finger in the fat of the beef joint, is thought to be based on Hogarth's friend John Pine.[2] In the foreground, a Highlander, an exile from the Jacobite rising of 1745,[1] sits slumped against the wall, his strength sapped by the poor French fare – a raw onion and a crust of bread. Hogarth is seen sketching to the left in the background, but the tip of the halberd and hand of the soldier who will arrest him are just appearing round the corner behind him.

There are strong references to the celebration of Eucharist in the picture. Through the gates, under the sign of a dove (that of an inn) a Roman Catholic mass is being celebrated. In the foreground, but still aligned with those in the background under the cross of the gate, the principal characters worship the beef. The man carrying it bows under the weight appearing to offer it up to the friar on partially bended knee. Above the scene in front of the gate, the dove of peace is replaced by a carrion bird, the crow. In the foreground fishwives superstitiously worship the face of a ray, and the Jacobite also clasps his hand together in prayer.

Hogarth's antipathy to the French had been apparent in his art since Noon in his Four Times of the Day series, painted in 1736. The March to Finchley, which he painted in 1749/50, provides a companion theme to The Gate of Calais: it depicts a fictional gathering of robust English guardsman who are to march north to defend London against the invasion of Bonnie Prince Charlie's Jacobites in 1745. Further anti-French sentiment is apparent in his two Invasion engravings, published in 1756, and in Beer Street, where Rev. James Townley's accompanying verses stress the superiority of the English. The Gate of Calais' secondary title, O, the Roast Beef of Old England, is a reference to the popular patriotic ballad 'The Roast Beef of Old England' from Henry Fielding's The Grub-Street Opera (1731), which told of how the food "ennobled our brains and enriched our blood" and laughed at "all-vapouring France"".

-------------------------------------------
1751 - Gin Lane and Beer St.

Gin, cursed Fiend, with Fury fraught,

Makes human Race a Prey.
It enters by a deadly Draught

And steals our Life away.

Virtue and Truth, driv'n to Despair
Its Rage compells to fly,
But cherishes with hellish Care

Theft, Murder, Perjury.

Damned Cup! that on the Vitals preys

That liquid Fire contains,
Which Madness to the heart conveys,

And rolls it thro' the Veins.

Comments on the picture:  Set in the parish of St Giles—a notorious slum district that Hogarth depicted in several works around this time—Gin Lane depicts the squalor and despair of a community raised on gin. 

1.  Desperation, death and decay pervade the scene. The only businesses that flourish serve the gin industry: 

a)  gin sellers; a distiller (the aptly named Kilman); 

b)  the pawnbroker where the avaricious Mr. Gripe greedily takes the vital possessions (the carpenter offers his saw and the housewife her cooking utensils) of the alcoholic residents of the street in return for a few pennies to feed their habit; and 

c)  the undertaker, for whom Hogarth implies at least a handful of new customers from this scene alone. 

2.  Most shockingly, the focus of the picture is a woman in the foreground, who, addled by gin and driven to prostitution by her habit—as evidenced by the syphilitic sores on her legs—lets her baby slip unheeded from her arms and plunge to its death in the stairwell of the gin cellar below. Half-naked, she has no concern for anything other than a pinch of snuff.

Other images of despair and madness fill the scene: 

1.  a lunatic cavorts in the street beating himself over the head with a pair of bellows while holding a baby impaled on a spike—the dead child's frantic mother rushes from the house screaming in horror; 

2.  a barber has taken his own life in the dilapidated attic of his barber-shop, ruined because nobody can afford a haircut or shave; 

3.  on the steps, below the woman who has let her baby fall, a skeletal pamphlet-seller rests, perhaps dead of starvation, as the unsold moralising pamphlet on the evils of gin-drinking, The Downfall of Mrs Gin, slips from his basket. 

4.  An ex-soldier, he has pawned most of his clothes to buy the gin in his basket, next to the pamphlet that denounces it. 

5.  Next to him sits a black dog, a symbol of despair and depression. 

6.  Outside the distiller a fight has broken out, and a crazed cripple raises his crutch to strike his blind compatriot.

Images of children on the path to destruction also litter the scene: aside from the dead baby on the spike and the child falling to its death, a baby is quieted by its mother with a cup of gin, and in the background of the scene an orphaned infant bawls naked on the floor as the body of its mother is loaded into a coffin on orders of the beadle.[13] Two young girls who are wards of the parish of St Giles—indicated by the badge on the arm of one of the girls—each take a glass. Hogarth also chose the slum of St Giles as setting for the first scene of The Four Stages of Cruelty, which he issued almost simultaneously with Beer Street and Gin Lane. Tom Nero, the central character of the Cruelty series wears an identical arm badge. In front of the pawnbroker's door a starving boy and a dog fight over a bone, while next to them a girl has fallen asleep; approaching her is a snail, emblematic of the sin of sloth

Background (Wiki)  The Gin Craze

Gin - Pot distilling a fermented grain mash (malt wine) from barley or other grains, then redistilling it with botanicals -- #1 Juniper, but also lemon and bitter orange peel, as well as a combination of other spices, which may include any of anise, angelica root and seed, orris root, licorice root, cinnamon, almond, cubeb, savory, lime peel, grapefruit peel, dragon eye (longan), saffron, baobab, frankincense, coriander, grains of paradise, nutmeg, cassia bark or others -- to extract the aromatic compounds. The fermentation of grain mash produces a neutral alcohol (similar to vodka).  Due to the use of pot stills, the alcohol content of the distillate is relatively low; around 68% ABV for a single distilled gin or 76% ABV for a double gin. This type of gin is often aged in tanks or wooden casks.

Gin was popularised in England following the accession of William of Orange in 1688. Gin provided an alternative to French brandy at a time of both political and religious conflict between Britain and France. Between 1689 and 1697, the Government passed a range of legislation aimed at restricting brandy imports and encouraging gin production. Most importantly, the monopoly of the London Guild of Distillers was broken in 1690, thereby opening up the market in gin distillation. The production and consumption of English gin, which was then popular amongst politicians and even Queen Anne, was encouraged by the government. This encouragement was shown in the reduced taxes on the distillation of spirits. Additionally, no licenses were needed to make spirits, so distillers of spirits could have smaller, more simple workshops than brewers, who needed to serve food and provide shelter for patrons.

Economic protectionism was a major factor in beginning the Gin Craze; as the price of food dropped and income grew, consumers suddenly had the opportunity to spend excess funds on spirits. By 1721, however, Middlesex magistrates were already decrying gin as "the principal cause of all the vice & debauchery committed among the inferior sort of people". . . . 

The British government tried a number of times to stop the flow of gin. The Gin Act 1736 taxed retail sales at a rate of 20 shillings a gallon on spirits and required licensees to take out a £50 annual licence to sell gin, a fee equivalent to about £7,000 today. The aim was to effectively prohibit the trade by making it economically unfeasible. Only two licences were ever taken out. The trade became illegal, consumption dipped but then continued to rise and the law was effectively repealed in 1743 following mass law-breaking and violence (particularly towards informers who were paid £5 to reveal the whereabouts of illegal gin shops). The illegally distilled gin which was produced following the 1736 Act was less reliable and more likely to result in poisoning.

By 1743, England was drinking 2.2 gallons (10 litres) of gin per person per year. As consumption levels increased, an organised campaign for more effective legislation began to emerge, led by the Bishop of Sodor and Man, Thomas Wilson, who, in 1736, had complained that gin produced a "drunken ungovernable set of people". Prominent anti-gin campaigners included Henry Fielding (whose 1751 "Enquiry into the Late Increase in Robbers" blamed gin consumption for both increased crime and increased ill health among children), Josiah Tucker, Daniel Defoe(who had originally campaigned for the liberalisation of distilling, but later complained that drunken mothers were threatening to produce a "fine spindle-shanked generation" of children), and – briefly – William Hogarth. Hogarth's engraving Gin Lane is a well known image of the gin craze, and is often paired with "Beer Street", creating a contrast between the miserable lives of gin drinkers and the healthy and enjoyable lives of beer drinkers.

The Gin Craze began to diminish after the Gin Act 1751. This Act lowered the annual licence fees, but encouraged "respectable" gin selling by requiring licensees to trade from premises rented for at least £10 a year. Historians suggest that gin consumption was reduced not as a result of legislation but because of the rising cost of grain. Landowners could afford to abandon the production of gin, and this fact, coupled with population growth and a series of poor harvests, resulted in lower wages and increased food prices. The Gin Craze had mostly ended by 1757. . . .

---------------------

Beer Street

Beer, happy Produce of our Isle

Can sinewy Strength impart,
And wearied with Fatigue and Toil

Can cheer each manly Heart.

Labour and Art upheld by Thee

Successfully advance,
We quaff Thy balmy Juice with Glee

And Water leave to France.

Genius of Health, thy grateful Taste

Rivals the Cup of Jove,
And warms each English generous Breast

With Liberty and Love!

In comparison to the sickly hopeless denizens of Gin Lane, the happy people of Beer Street sparkle with robust health and bonhomie. "Here all is joyous and thriving. Industry and jollity go hand in hand". The only business that is in trouble is the pawnbroker: Mr Pinch lives in the one poorly maintained, crumbling building in the picture. In contrast to his Gin Lane counterpart, the prosperous Gripe, who displays expensive-looking cups in his upper window (a sign of his flourishing business), Pinch displays only a wooden contraption, perhaps a mousetrap, in his upper window, while he is forced to take his beer through a window in the door, which suggests his business is so unprofitable as to put the man in fear of being seized for debt. The sign-painter is also shown in rags, but his role in the image is unclear.

The rest of the scene is populated with doughty and good-humoured English workers. It is George II's birthday (30 October) (indicated by the flag flying on the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields in the background) and the inhabitants of the scene are no doubt toasting his health. Under the sign of the Barley Mow, a blacksmith or cooper sits with a foaming tankard in one hand and a leg of beef in the other. Together with a butcher—his steel hangs at his side—they laugh with the pavior (sometimes identified as a drayman) as he courts a housemaid (the key she holds is a symbol of domesticity). Ronald Paulson suggests a parallel between the trinity of signs of ill-omen in Gin Lane, the pawnbroker, distiller, and undertaker, and the trinity of English "worthies" here, the blacksmith, pavior, and butcher. Close by a pair of fish-sellers rest with a pint and a porter sets down his load to refresh himself. In the background, two men carrying a sedan chair pause for drink, while the passenger remains wedged inside, her large hoop skirt pinning her in place.[b] On the roof, the builders, who are working on the publican's house above the "Sun" tavern share a toast with the master of a tailor's workshop. In this image it is a barrel of beer that hangs from a rope above the street, in contrast to the body of the barber in Gin Lane.[16]

The inhabitants of both Beer Street and Gin Lane are drinking rather than working, but in Beer Street the workers are resting after their labours—all those depicted are in their place of work, or have their wares or the tools of their trade about them—while in Gin Lane the people drink instead of working.[17] Exceptions to this rule come, most obviously, in the form of those who profit from the vice in Gin Lane, but in Beer Street Hogarth takes the opportunity to make another satirical statement. Aside from the enigmatic sign-painter, the only others engaged in work in the scene are the tailors in an attic. The wages of journeyman tailors were the subject of an ongoing dispute, which was finally settled by arbitration at the 1751 July Quarter sessions (in the journeymen's favour). Some believe that the tailors serve another purpose, in that Hogarth shows them continuing to toil while all the other inhabitants of the street, including their master, pause to refresh themselves.[17] Much as the tailors are ignored by their master and left to continue working, the occupants of Beer Street are oblivious to the suffering on Gin Lane.

Hogarth also takes the opportunity to comment on artistic pretensions. Tied up together in a basket and destined for use as scrap at the trunk-maker are George Turnbull's On Ancient Painting, Hill on Royal Societies, Modern Tragedies, Polticks vol. 9999 and William Lauder's Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns in Paradise Lost, all examples, real and imagined, of the type of literature that Hogarth thought fabricated connections between art and politics and sought out aesthetic connections that did not exist. Lauder's work was a hoax that painted Milton as a plagiarist.[18]

The picture is a counterpoint to the more powerful Gin Lane—Hogarth intended Beer Street to be viewed first to make Gin Lane more shocking—but it is also a celebration of Englishness and depicts of the benefits of being nourished by the native beer. No foreign influences pollute what is a fiercely nationalistic image. An early impression showed a scrawny Frenchman being ejected from the scene by the burly blacksmith who in later prints holds aloft a leg of mutton or ham (Paulson suggests the Frenchman was removed to prevent confusion with the ragged sign-painter).[19] There is a celebration of English industriousness in the midst of the jollity: the two fish-sellers sing the New Ballad on the Herring Fishery (by Hogarth's friend, the poet John Lockman), while their overflowing baskets bear witness to the success of the revived industry; the King's speech displayed on the table makes reference to the "Advancement of Our Commerce and the cultivating Art of Peace"; and although the workers have paused for a break, it is clear they are not idle. The builders have not left their workplace to drink; the master tailor toasts them from his window but does not leave the attic; the men gathered around the table in the foreground have not laid their tools aside. Townley's patriotic verses further refer to the contrast between England and France:

Paulson sees the images as working on different levels for different classes. The middle classes would have seen the pictures as a straight comparison of good and evil, while the working classes would have seen the connection between the prosperity of Beer Street and the poverty of Gin Lane. He focuses on the well-fed woman wedged into the sedan chair at the rear of Beer Street as a cause of the ruin of the gin-addled woman who is the principal focus of Gin Lane. The free-market economy espoused in the King's address and practised in Beer Street leaves the exponents prosperous and corpulent but at the same time makes the poor poorer. What fucking horseshit!!!  For Paulson the two prints depict the results of a move away from a paternalistic state towards an unregulated market economy. Further, more direct, contrasts are made with the woman in the sedan chair and those in Gin Lane: the woman fed gin as she is wheeled home in a barrow and the dead woman being lifted into her coffin are both mirror images of the hoop-skirted woman reduced to madness and death