164-545: Beer Street and Gin Lane are two prints issued in 1751 by English artist William Hogarth in support of what would become the Gin Act . Designed to be viewed alongside each other, they depict the evils of the consumption of gin (then a generic term for grain-based distilled spirits) as a contrast to the merits of drinking beer . At almost the same time and on the same subject, Hogarth's friend Henry Fielding published An Inquiry into
328-437: A hackney coachman , and the recreational cruelty of the schoolboy has turned into the professional cruelty of a man at work. Tom's horse, worn out from years of mistreatment and overloading, has collapsed, breaking its leg and upsetting the carriage. Disregarding the animal's pain, Tom has beaten it so furiously that he has put its eye out. In a satirical aside, Hogarth shows four corpulent barristers struggling to climb out of
492-446: A hanged stickman figure upon a wall, with the name "Tom Nero" underneath, and is pointing to this dog torturer. The second shows Tom Nero has grown up to become a Hackney 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
656-607: A better Manner for the Curious, at 1s. 6d. each. And on Thursday following will be publish'd four Prints on the Subject of Cruelty, Price and Size the same. N.B. As the Subjects of these Prints are calculated to reform some reigning Vices peculiar to the lower Class of People, in hopes to render them of more extensive use, the Author has published them in the cheapest Manner possible. To be had at
820-430: A child is being run over by the wheel of a dray , as the drayman dozes off on the job. 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
984-498: A contemporary bill records that the contestants would fight with their left leg strapped to the floor, with the one with the fewest bleeding wounds being adjudged the victor. One of the advertised participants in the boxing match is James Field , who was hanged two weeks before the prints were issued and features again in the final image of the series; the other participant is George "the Barber" Taylor , who had been champion of England but
1148-418: A deterrent. At the time Hogarth made the engravings, this right was not enshrined in law, but the surgeons still removed bodies when they could. A tattoo on his arm identifies Tom Nero, and the rope still around his neck shows his method of execution. The dissectors, their hearts hardened after years of working with cadavers, are shown to have as much feeling for the body as Nero had for his victims; his eye
1312-413: A final fight in which he was badly beaten, dying from his injuries several months later. Most records date Taylor's championship to the middle 1730s. c. The initials on the box are normally read as A. G. for Ann Gill, but the G resembles a D, suggesting the box too may have been stolen. d. John Ireland identifies the president as "Mr Frieake, the master of Nourse, to whom Mr Potts
1476-605: A footnote to this statement about Liotard saying, "Hogarth has introduced him, in several instances, alluding to this want of genius." However, Liotard was wearing a full beard, as his self-portrait of 1746 shows. Beer Street and Gin Lane with their depictions of the deprivation of the wasted gin-drinkers and the corpulent good health of the beer-drinkers, owe a debt to Pieter Bruegel the Elder 's La Maigre Cuisine and La Grasse Cuisine engraved by Pieter van der Heyden in 1563, which shows two meals, one of which overflows with food and
1640-412: A foreshadowing of his ultimate fate, Tom Nero's name is written under the chalk drawing of a man hanging from the gallows; the meaning is made clear by the schoolboy artist pointing towards Tom. The absence of parish officers who should be controlling the boys is an intentional rebuke on Hogarth's part; he agreed with Henry Fielding that one of the causes for the rising crime rate was the lack of care from
1804-470: A form of moral instruction; Hogarth was dismayed by the routine acts of cruelty he witnessed on the streets of London. Issued on cheap paper, the prints were destined for the lower classes . The series shows a roughness of execution and a brutality that is untempered by the funny touches common in Hogarth's other works, but which he felt was necessary to impress his message on the intended audience. Nevertheless,
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#17328523710221968-419: A funeral ceremony that follows the character's death from venereal disease . The inaugural series was an immediate success and was followed in 1733–1735 by the sequel A Rake's Progress . 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 –
2132-490: A gin-induced stupor. Such cases provided a focus for anti-gin campaigners such as Thomas Wilson , and the image of the neglectful and/or abusive mother became increasingly central to anti-gin propaganda. Sir John Gonson , featured in Hogarth's earlier A Harlot's Progress , turned his attention from prostitution to gin and began prosecuting gin-related crimes with severity. The gin cellar Gin Royal below advertises its wares with
2296-399: A haircut or shave; 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. An ex-soldier, he has pawned most of his clothes to buy the gin in his basket, next to the pamphlet that denounces it. Next to him sits a black dog,
2460-410: A handful of new customers from this scene alone. 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
2624-638: A learned artist supported by volumes of Shakespeare , Milton and Swift . In 1749, he represented the somewhat disorderly English troops on their March of the Guards to Finchley (formerly located in Thomas Coram Foundation for Children , now Foundling Museum ). Others works included his ingenious Satire on False Perspective (1754); his satire on canvassing in his Election series (1755–1758; now in Sir John Soane's Museum ); his ridicule of
2788-437: A letter from Ann Gill which reads: Dear Tommy My mistress has been the best of women to me, and my conscience flies in my face as often as I think of wronging her; yet I am resolved to venture body and soul to do as you would have me, so do not fail to meet me as you said you would, for I will bring along with me all the things I can lay my hands on. So no more at present; but I remain yours till death. Ann Gill. The spelling
2952-411: 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. In the twelve prints of Industry and Idleness (1747), Hogarth shows the progression in the lives of two apprentices , one of whom
3116-558: A man in the Second stage of cruelty , and then to robbery, seduction , and murder in Cruelty in perfection . Finally, in The reward of cruelty , he receives what Hogarth warns is the inevitable fate of those who start down the path Nero has followed: his body is taken from the gallows after his execution as a murderer and is mutilated by surgeons in the anatomical theatre . The prints were intended as
3280-416: A man notes down Nero's hackney coach number to report him. By the time of the third plate, Tom Nero has progressed from the mistreatment of animals to theft and murder. Having encouraged his pregnant lover, Ann Gill, to rob and leave her mistress, he murders the girl when she meets him. The murder is shown to be particularly brutal: her neck, wrist, and index finger are almost severed. Her trinket box and
3444-425: A manuscript called Apology for Painters ( c. 1761 ) and unpublished "autobiographical notes". Hogarth lived in an age when artwork became increasingly commercialized, being viewed in shop windows, taverns , and public buildings, and sold in printshops . Old hierarchies broke down, and new forms began to flourish: the ballad opera , the bourgeois tragedy , and especially, a new form of fiction called
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#17328523710223608-501: 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. On
3772-489: A piece titled Hogarth the Ham-fisted condemned the heavy-handedness and lack of subtlety that made his images an "over-emphatic rant in his crude insistence on excessive and repetitive detail to reinforce a point". The reception by the general public is difficult to gauge. Certainly one shilling put the prints out of reach for the poorest people, and those who were pawning their clothes for gin money would not be tempted to buy
3936-435: A pinch of snuff . This mother was not such an exaggeration as she might appear: in 1734, Judith Dufour reclaimed her two-year-old daughter, Mary, from the workhouse where she had been given a new set of clothes; she then strangled the girl and left her body in a ditch so that she could sell the clothes (for 1s 4d) to buy gin. In another case, an elderly woman, Mary Estwick, let a toddler burn to death while she slept in
4100-418: A playing boy while the drayman sleeps, oblivious to the boy's injury and the beer spilling from his barrels. Posters in the background advertise a cockfight and a boxing match as further evidence of the brutal entertainments favoured by the subjects of the image. The boxing match is to take place at Broughton's Amphitheatre, a notoriously tough venue established by the "father of pugilism", Jack Broughton :
4264-512: A pointed skewering of upper-class 18th-century society. An engraved version of the same series, produced by French engravers, appeared in 1745. 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
4428-619: A print, but there is evidence that Hogarth's prints were in wide circulation even among those that would have regarded them as a luxury, and there are records from the 18th century indicating that his works were used for moral instruction by schoolmasters. At any rate, the Gin Act ;– passed in no small measure as the result of Fielding and Hogarth's propaganda – was considered a success: gin production fell from 7 million imperial gallons (32 million litres) in 1751 to 4.25 million imperial gallons (19.3 million litres) in 1752,
4592-513: A sedan chair with her hoop skirt pinning her in place, as the subject of a painting displayed in Hogarth's Taste in High Life , a forerunner to Marriage à-la-mode commissioned by Mary Edwards around 1742. c. While Davenport's engraving of Gin Lane is a faithful reproduction of Hogarth's original there are multiple minor variations in his engraving of Beer Street : noticeably, elements from different states are mixed, and lettering
4756-411: A single face looks to the heavens in pity. In the alternative image for this stage, produced as a woodcut by Bell, Tom is shown with his hands free. There are also differences in the wording of the letter and some items, like the lantern and books, are larger and simpler while others, such as the man to the left of Tom and the topiary bush, have been removed. The owl has become a winged hourglass on
4920-417: A symbol of despair and depression. 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
5084-620: A truthful, vivid full-length portrait of his friend, the philanthropic Captain Coram , for the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children , now in the Foundling Museum . This portrait, and his unfinished oil sketch of a young fishwoman, entitled The Shrimp Girl ( National Gallery, London ), may be called masterpieces of British painting . There are also portraits of his wife, his two sisters, and of many other people; among them Bishop Hoadly and Bishop Herring . The engraved portrait of John Wilkes
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5248-561: A unique proof of Taste in High Life , which went for £4.4s. A proof (probably unique) of the print of Hogarth's self-portrait (with his pug ) Gulielmus Hogarth 1749 sold for £25. William Hogarth William Hogarth FRSA ( / ˈ h oʊ ɡ ɑːr θ / ; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraver , pictorial satirist , social critic , editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip -like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects", and he
5412-492: 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,
5576-429: A well-known boxer who also featured on a poster in the second plate, and Macleane , an infamous highwayman . Both men were hanged shortly before the print was published (Macleane in 1750 and Field in 1751). The skeletons seemingly point to one another. Field's name above the skeleton on the left may have been a last minute substitution for "GENTL HARRY" referring to Henry Simms , also known as Young Gentleman Harry. Simms
5740-569: 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
5904-481: Is also a celebration of Englishness and depicts 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). There
6068-458: Is altered or removed on the copy of the King's speech and the scrap books. d. Baker had bought a number of Hogarth's works at Gulston's sale in 1786 where the first state prints of Gin Lane and Beer Street sold for £1.7s. Whether they were bought by Baker directly is not recorded. e. Compare this with the four plates of Four Times of the Day , which sold for £6.12s.6d., and
6232-509: Is by far the most desired" as it was cheaper and its effects more enduring. By 1750 over a quarter of all residences in St Giles parish in London were gin shops, and most of these also operated as receivers of stolen goods and co-ordinating spots for prostitution. The two prints were issued a month after Hogarth's friend Henry Fielding published his contribution to the debate on gin: An Inquiry into
6396-455: Is dedicated and hard working, while the other, who is idle, commits crime and is eventually executed. This shows the work ethic of Protestant England, where those who worked hard were rewarded, such as the industrious apprentice who becomes Sheriff (plate 8), Alderman (plate 10), and finally the Lord Mayor of London in the last plate in the series. The idle apprentice, who begins "at play in
6560-458: Is hanged and dissected. The Anatomy Act 1832 ended the dissection of murderers, and most of the animal tortures depicted were outlawed by the Cruelty to Animals Act 1835 , so by the 1850s The Four Stages of Cruelty had come to be viewed as a somewhat historical series, though still one with the power to shock, a power it retains for a modern audience. a. A pair of impressions from Bell's original printing were acquired for £1600 by
6724-407: Is ignored by the inhabitants of Beer Street as they ignore the misery of Gin Lane itself. Paulson suggests that he is the lone "beautiful" figure in the scene. The corpulent types that populate Beer Street later featured as representations of ugliness in Hogarth's The Analysis of Beauty , while the painter, as he leans back to admire his work, forms the serpentine shape that Hogarth identified as
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6888-522: 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
7052-419: Is no part of my works of which I am so proud, and in which I now feel so happy, as in the series of The Four Stages of Cruelty because I believe the publication of theme has checked the diabolical spirit of barbarity to the brute creation which, I am sorry to say, was once so prevalent in this country. In his unfinished Apology for Painters he commented further: I had rather, if cruelty has been prevented by
7216-410: Is painting a sign advertising gin, so his ragged appearance could equally reflect the rejection of the spirit by the people of Beer Street. He may also be a resident of Gin Lane, and Hogarth includes him as a connection to the other scene, and as a suggestion that the government's initial policy of encouraging the distillation of gin may be the cause of both Gin Lane's ruin and Beer Street's prosperity. He
7380-564: Is perfect and while this is perhaps unrealistic, Hogarth deliberately avoids any chance of the scene becoming comical. A discarded envelope is addressed "To Tho Nero at Pinne...". Ronald Paulson sees a parallel between the lamb beaten to death in the Second Stage and the defenceless girl murdered here. Below the print, the text claims that Nero, if not repentant, is at least stunned by his actions: To lawless Love when once betray'd. Soon Crime to Crime succeeds: At length beguil'd to Theft,
7544-456: Is perhaps best known for his series A Harlot's Progress , A Rake's Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode . Familiarity with his work is so widespread that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian". Hogarth was born in the City of London into a lower-middle-class family. In his youth he took up an apprenticeship with an engraver , but did not complete
7708-480: Is populated by fat diners, while in the other the emaciated guests squabble over a few meagre scraps. Brueghel's compositions are also mirrored in the layers of detail in Hogarth's two images. Inspiration for these two prints and The Four Stages of Cruelty probably came from his friend Fielding: Hogarth turned from the satirical wit of Marriage A-la-Mode in favour of a more cutting examination of crime and punishment with these prints and Industry and Idleness at
7872-480: Is put out just as his horse's was, and a dog feeds on his heart, taking a poetic revenge for the torture inflicted on one of its kind in the first plate. Nero's face appears contorted in agony and although this depiction is not realistic, Hogarth meant it to heighten the fear for the audience. Just as his murdered mistress's finger pointed to Nero's destiny in Cruelty in Perfection , in this print Nero's finger points to
8036-453: Is resolved to do as he would have her, closing with: "I remain yours till death." The fourth, titled The 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 the Murder Act 1751 , which allowed for the public dissection of criminals who had been hanged for murder. Hogarth
8200-567: The London Evening Post over three days from 14 to 16 February 1751. The prints themselves were published on 21 February 1751 and each was accompanied by a moralising commentary, written by the Rev. James Townley , a friend of Hogarth's. As with earlier engravings, such as Industry and Idleness , individual prints were sold on "ordinary" paper for 1s. (one shilling , equating to about £ 9.90 in 2023 terms), cheap enough to be purchased by
8364-516: The Engraving Copyright Act 1734 , so much so that the Act is commonly known as "Hogarth's Act", keeping costs down provided further insurance against infringement. 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. Desperation, death and decay pervade
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#17328523710228528-549: The Fleet Prison for five years. Hogarth never spoke of his father's imprisonment. In 1720, Hogarth enrolled at the original St Martin's Lane Academy in Peter Court, London, which was run by Louis Chéron and John Vanderbank . He attended alongside other future leading figures in art and design, such as Joseph Highmore , William Kent , and Arthur Pond . However, the academy seems to have stopped operating in 1724, at around
8692-539: The Foundling Hospital (1747, formerly at the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children , now in the Foundling Museum ); Paul before Felix (1748) at Lincoln's Inn ; and his altarpiece for St. Mary Redcliffe , Bristol (1755–56). The Gate of Calais (1748; now in Tate Britain ) was produced soon after his return from a visit to France. Horace Walpole wrote that Hogarth had run a great risk to go there since
8856-670: The Gin Act 1751 . Hogarth's friend, the magistrate Henry Fielding , may have enlisted Hogarth to help with propaganda for the Gin Act; Beer Street and Gin Lane were issued shortly after his work An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, and Related Writings , and addressed the same issues. Other prints were his outcry against inhumanity in The Four Stages of Cruelty (published 21 February 1751), in which Hogarth depicts
9020-550: The University of Glasgow 's Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in 2005. b. There is some confusion over the date of George "The Barber" Taylor's career and death. In his earlier work Paulson puts him as a pupil of Broughton, killed in a fight with him in 1750, and the Tate Gallery dates Hogarth's sketches to c. 1750. In Hogarth's "Harlot" , he states that Taylor retired in 1750 but came out of retirement in 1757 for
9184-426: The novel with which authors such as Henry 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 moralizing Protestant tradition of Dutch genre painting , and the very vigorous satirical traditions of
9348-460: The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle . 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
9512-623: The " line of beauty ". Thomas Clerk, in his 1812 The Works of William Hogarth , writes that the sign-painter has been suggested as a satire on Jean-Étienne Liotard (called John Stephen by Clerk), a Swiss portrait painter and enameller whom Horace Walpole praised for his attention to detail and realism, mentioning he was "devoid of imagination, and one would think memory, he could render nothing but what he saw before his eyes". In his notes in Walpole's Anecdotes of painting in England , James Dallaway adds
9676-623: The "grand style of painting" which avoids "minute attention" to the visible world. 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." Writer, art historian and politician, Horace Walpole , was also critical of Hogarth as a history painter, but did find value in his satirical prints. Hogarth's history pictures include The Pool of Bethesda and The Good Samaritan , executed in 1736–1737 for St Bartholomew's Hospital ; Moses brought before Pharaoh's Daughter , painted for
9840-604: 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 the Prohibition of 1678 , which barred popular French brandy imports, and the forced disbandment, in 1690, of the London Guild of Distillers , whose members had previously been the only legal manufacturers of alcohol, leading to an increase in
10004-470: The Cup of Jove, And warms each English generous Breast With Liberty and Love! 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
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#173285237102210168-407: The Day (1738), and Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn (1738). He may also have printed Burlington Gate (1731), evoked by Alexander Pope 's Epistle to Lord Burlington , and defending Lord Chandos, who is therein satirized. This print gave great offence, and was suppressed. However, modern authorities such as Ronald Paulson no longer attribute it to Hogarth. In 1731, Hogarth completed
10332-426: The Day series. A more tender-hearted boy, perhaps the dog's owner, pleads with Nero to stop tormenting the frightened animal, even offering food in an attempt to appease him. This boy supposedly represents the young George, Prince of Wales (later King George III), who was twelve years old in the year the cartoon was published. His appearance is deliberately more pleasing than the scowling ugly ruffians that populate
10496-619: The Dutch artist Egbert van Heemskerck , who had lived in England and whose work Hogarth admired. An earlier source of inspiration may have been a woodcut in the 1495 Fasciculo di medicina by Johannes de Ketham which, although simpler, has many of the same elements, including the seated president flanked by two windows. Below the print are these final words: Behold the Villain's dire disgrace! Not Death itself can end. He finds no peaceful Burial-Place, His breathless Corse, no friend. Torn from
10660-399: The English broadsheet 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, "In A Harlot's Progress , every single plate but one is based on Dürer 's images of
10824-697: The English passion for cockfighting in The Cockpit (1759) ; his attack on Methodism in Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism (1762); his political anti-war satire in The Times , plate I (1762); and his pessimistic view of all things in Tailpiece, or The Bathos (1764). In 1757, Hogarth was appointed Serjeant Painter to the King. Hogarth wrote and published his ideas of artistic design in his book The Analysis of Beauty (1753). In it, he professes to define
10988-594: The Golden Head in Leicester-Fields, Where may be had all his other Works. The prints, like The Four Stages of Cruelty , had moralising verses composed by Rev James Townley and, on the surface, had a similar intent – to shock the lower classes into reforming. Engraved directly from drawings, no paintings of the two scenes exist, although there are preliminary sketches. By reducing his prices, Hogarth hoped to reach "the lower Class of People", and while one shilling
11152-579: The Gormagons (1724); A Just View of the British Stage (1724); some book illustrations; and the small print 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,
11316-579: The Grecian Venus doth but coarsely imitate." On 23 March 1729, Hogarth eloped with Jane Thornhill at Paddington Church , against the wishes of her father, the artist Sir James Thornhill . 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
11480-691: The Late Increase in Robbers , and they aim at the same targets, though Hogarth's work lays more blame for the gin craze on oppression by the governing class and focuses less on the choice of crime as a ticket to a life of ease. Hogarth advertised their issue in the London Evening Post between 14 and 16 February 1751 alongside the prints of The Four Stages of Cruelty , which were issued the following week: This Day are publish'd, Price 1 s. each. Two large Prints, design'd and etch'd by Mr. Hogarth called BEER-STREET and GIN-LANE A Number will be printed in
11644-492: The Late Increase in Robbers . Issued together with The Four Stages of Cruelty , the prints continued a movement started in Industry and Idleness , away from depicting the laughable foibles of fashionable society (as he had done with Marriage A-la-Mode ) and towards a more cutting satire on the problems of poverty and crime. On the simplest level, Hogarth portrays the inhabitants of Beer Street as happy and healthy, nourished by
11808-452: The Maid By her Beguiler bleeds. Yet learn, seducing Man! nor Night, With all its sable Cloud, can screen the guilty Deed from sight; Foul Murder cries aloud. The gaping Wounds and bloodstain'd steel, Now shock his trembling Soul: But Oh! what Pangs his Breast must feel, When Death his Knell shall toll. Various features in the print are meant to intensify the feelings of dread:
11972-553: 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. 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
12136-459: The Root, that wicked Tongue, Which daily swore and curst! Those Eyeballs from their Sockets wrung, That glow'd with lawless Lust! His Heart expos'd to prying Eyes, To Pity has no claim; But, dreadful! from his Bones shall rise, His Monument of Shame. Hogarth was pleased with the results. European Magazine reported that he commented to a bookseller from Cornhill (a Mr. Sewell): there
12300-636: The Spirit, Fund the Party , which added imagery from a Smirnoff vodka commercial of the 1990s to reveal the then Prime Minister, John Major , in the role of the gin-soaked woman letting her baby fall, while Martin Rowson substituted drugs for gin and updated the scene to feature loft conversions, wine bars and mobile phones in Cocaine Lane in 2001. There is also a Pub Street and Binge Lane version, which follows closely both
12464-496: The Vitals preys That liquid Fire contains, Which Madness to the heart conveys, And rolls it thro' the Veins. 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
12628-418: The application. When it became apparent that copious gin consumption was causing social problems, efforts were made to control the production of the spirit. The Gin Act 1736 imposed high taxes on sales of gin, forbade the sale of the spirit in quantities of less than two gallons, and required an annual payment of £ 50 for a retail licence. These measures had little effect beyond increasing smuggling and driving
12792-498: 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. Influenced by French and Italian painting and engraving, Hogarth's works are mostly satirical caricatures, sometimes bawdily sexual, mostly of the first rank of realistic portraiture. They became widely popular and mass-produced via prints in his lifetime, and he
12956-798: The architect and painter William Kent . He continued that theme in 1727, with the Large Masquerade Ticket . In 1726, Hogarth prepared twelve large engravings illustrating Samuel Butler 's Hudibras . These he himself valued highly, and they are among his best early works, though they are based on small book illustrations. In the following years, he turned his attention to the production of small " conversation pieces " (i.e., groups in oil of full-length portraits from 12 to 15 inches (300 to 380 mm) high. Among his efforts in oil between 1728 and 1732 were The Fountaine Family ( c. 1730 ), The Assembly at Wanstead House , The House of Commons examining Bambridge , and several pictures of
13120-414: The blacksmith, this was substituted in 1759 by the more commonly seen third state in which the Frenchman was replaced by the pavior or drayman fondling the housemaid, and a wall added behind the sign-painter. Prints in the first state sold at George Baker's sale in 1825 for £2/10s, but a unique proof of Gin Lane with many variations, particularly a blank area under the roof of Kilman's, sold for £15/15s at
13284-458: The boiled bones being prepared for display, indicating his ultimate fate. While the surgeons working on the body are observed by the mortar-boarded academics in the front row, the physicians, who can be identified by their wigs and canes, largely ignore the dissection and consult among themselves. The president has been identified as John Freke , president of the Royal College of Surgeons at
13448-465: The broken-down wall at the rear of the scene as mark of his genius. His comments on Gin Lane formed the centre of his argument to rebut those who considered Hogarth a vulgar artist because of his choice of vulgar subjects: There is more of imagination in it-that power which draws all things to one,-which makes things animate and inanimate, beings with their attributes, subjects and their accessories, take one colour, and serve to one effect. Every thing in
13612-424: The carriage in a ludicrous state. They are probably caricatures of eminent jurists, but Hogarth did not reveal the subjects' names, and they have not been identified. Elsewhere in the scene, other acts of cruelty against animals take place: a drover beats a lamb to death, an ass is driven on by force despite being overloaded, and an enraged bull tosses one of its tormentors. Some of these acts are recounted in
13776-537: The case was decided in his favour on 28 May 1728. Early satirical works included an Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme ( c. 1721 , published 1724), about the disastrous stock market crash of 1720, known as the South Sea Bubble , in which many English people lost a great deal of money. In the bottom left corner, he shows Protestant , Roman Catholic , and Jewish figures gambling, while in
13940-413: 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 . In the background the church of St. George's Church, Bloomsbury , can be seen, but it is a faint and distant image, and the picture is composed so
14104-563: The character's life ultimately ends in Bethlem Royal Hospital . The original paintings of A Harlot's Progress were destroyed in the fire at Fonthill House in 1755; the oil paintings of A Rake's Progress (1733–34) are displayed in the gallery room at Sir John Soane's Museum , London, UK. When the success of A Harlot's Progress and A Rake's Progress resulted in numerous pirated reproductions by unscrupulous printsellers, Hogarth lobbied in parliament for greater legal control over
14268-504: The chief actors in John Gay 's popular The Beggar's Opera . One of his real-life subjects was Sarah Malcolm , whom he sketched two days before her execution. One of Hogarth's masterpieces of this period is the depiction of an amateur performance by children of John Dryden 's The Indian Emperour, or The Conquest of Mexico by Spaniards, being the Sequel of The Indian Queen (1732–1735) at
14432-533: The church yard" (plate 3), holes up "in a Garrett with a Common Prostitute" after turning highwayman (plate 7) and "executed at Tyburn" (plate 11). The idle apprentice is sent to the gallows by the industrious apprentice himself. For each plate, there is at least one passage from the Bible at the bottom, mostly from the Book of Proverbs , such as for the first plate: Later prints of significance include his pictorial warning of
14596-428: The clock tower. Having been tried and found guilty of murder, Nero has now been hanged and his body taken for the ignominious process of public dissection . The year after the prints were issued, the Murder Act 1752 would ensure that the bodies of murderers could be delivered to the surgeons so they could be "dissected and anatomised". It was hoped this further punishment on the body and denial of burial would act as
14760-451: The consequences of alcoholism in Beer Street and Gin Lane (1751). Hogarth engraved Beer Street to show a happy city drinking the 'good' beverage, English beer , in contrast to Gin Lane , in which the effects of drinking gin are shown – as a more potent liquor, gin caused more problems for society. There had been a sharp increase in the popularity of gin at this time, which was called
14924-415: 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 a portion ." However, he soon after relented, becoming more generous to, and living in harmony with the couple until his death. Hogarth
15088-410: 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
15252-468: The distilling trade underground. Various loopholes were exploited to avoid the taxes, including selling gin under pseudonyms such as Ladies' Delight , Bob , Cuckold's Delight , and the none-too-subtle Parliament gin . The prohibitive duty was gradually reduced and finally abolished in 1743. Francis Place later wrote that enjoyments for the poor of this time were limited: They had often had only two: "sexual intercourse and drinking", and that "drunkenness
15416-412: The earliest of his series of moral works, a body of work that led to wide recognition. The collection of six scenes was entitled A Harlot's Progress and appeared first as paintings (now lost) before being published as engravings. A Harlot's Progress depicts the fate of a country girl who begins prostituting – the six scenes are chronological, starting with a meeting with a bawd and ending with
15580-476: The engraver Ellis Gamble in Leicester Fields , where he learned to engrave trade cards and similar products. 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-speaking coffee house at St John's Gate , was imprisoned for debt in
15744-420: The engravings as an example of how cruelty towards animals leads indirectly to failing duties towards humans as Hogarth "brings home to us the terrible rewards of cruelty, and this should be an impressive lesson to children." Others found the series less to their liking. Charles Lamb dismissed the series as mere caricature, not worthy to be included alongside Hogarth's other work, but rather something produced as
15908-411: The finer lines of some of his other works. Fine engraving and delicate artwork would have rendered the prints too expensive for the intended audience, and Hogarth also believed a bold stroke could portray the passions of the subjects just as well as fine lines, noting that "neither great correctness of drawing or fine engraving were at all necessary". To ensure that the prints were priced within reach of
16072-536: The first print Hogarth introduces Tom Nero, whose surname may have been inspired by the Roman Emperor of the same name or a contraction of "No hero". Conspicuous in the centre of the plate, he is shown being assisted by other boys to insert an arrow into a dog's rectum , a torture apparently inspired by a devil punishing a sinner in Jacques Callot 's Temptation of St. Anthony . A badge initialled with "S:G", on
16236-420: The floor as the body of its mother is loaded into a coffin on orders of the beadle . 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,
16400-550: The format and the sentiment of Hogarth's originals. In 2016 the Royal Society for Public Health commissioned artist Thomas Moore to re-imagine Gin Lane to reflect the public health problems of the 21st century. The work is displayed in the Foundling Museum, London. a. The snuff may be a reference to Fielding, who was renowned as a heavy snuff taker. b. This woman appeared as she does here, wedged into
16564-436: The four prints, be the maker of them than the [Raphael] cartoons, unless I lived in a Roman Catholic country. In his 1817 book Shakespeare and His Times , Nathan Drake credits the representation of "throwing at cocks" in the first plate for changing public opinion about the practice, which was common at the time, and prompting magistrates to take a harder line on offenders. In his "Lectures on Ethics" Immanuel Kant refers to
16728-604: The fourth in the quartet of paintings (later released as engravings) collectively entitled the Four Times of the Day . His main home was in Leicester Square (then known as Leicester Fields), but he bought a country retreat in Chiswick in 1749, the house now known as Hogarth's House and preserved as a museum, and spent time there for the rest of his life. The Hogarths had no children, although they fostered foundling children. He
16892-430: The gate, with a "soldier's hand upon my shoulder", running him in. Notable Hogarth engravings in the 1740s include The Enraged Musician (1741), the six prints of Marriage à-la-mode (1745; executed by French artists under Hogarth's inspection), and The Stage Coach or The Country Inn Yard (1747). In 1745, Hogarth painted a self-portrait with his pug dog, Trump (now also in Tate Britain ), which shows him as
17056-476: The goods she had stolen lie on the ground beside her, and the index finger of her partially severed hand points to the words "God's Revenge against Murder" written on a book that, along with the Book of Common Prayer , has fallen from the box. A woman searching Nero's pockets uncovers pistols, a number of pocket watches —evidence of his having turned to highway robbery (as Tom Idle did in Industry and Idleness ), and
17220-513: The great style of painting is poor in the comparison". Both John Nichols and Samuel Felton felt that the inclusion of Turnbull's work in the pile of scrap books was harsh, Felton going as far as to suggest Hogarth should have read it before condemning it. After the Tate Britain 's 2007 exhibition of Hogarth's works the art critic Brian Sewell commented that "Hogarth saw it all and saw it straight, without Rowlandson's gloss of puerile humour and without Gainsborough's gloss of sentimentality", but in
17384-453: The home of John Conduitt , master of the mint, in St George's Street, Hanover Square . Hogarth's other works in the 1730s include 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 (1736), The Distrest Poet (1736), The Four Times of
17548-417: The intended audience, Hogarth originally commissioned the block-cutter J. Bell to produce the four designs as woodcuts . This proved more expensive than expected, so only the last two of the four images were cut and were not issued commercially at the time. Instead, Hogarth proceeded to create the engravings himself and announced the publication of the prints, along with that of Beer Street and Gin Lane , in
17712-443: 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 rejected Lord Shaftesbury 's then-current ideal of the classical Greek male in favour of the living, breathing female. He said, "Who but a bigot, even to the antiques , will say that he has not seen faces and necks, hands and arms in living women, that even
17876-435: The lower classes as a means of moral instruction. "Fine" versions were also available on "superior" paper for 1s. 6d. (one shilling and sixpence , about £ 14.90 in 2023 terms) for collectors. Variations on plates III and IV exist from Bell's original woodcuts, bearing the earlier date of 1 January 1750, and were reprinted in 1790 by John Boydell , but examples from either of the woodcut printings are uncommon. In
18040-598: The lowest level for twenty years. By 1757, George Burrington reported, "We do not see the hundreth part of poor wretches drunk in the street". Social changes, quite apart from the Gin Act (among them the increase in the price of grain after a series of bad harvests), were reducing the dependence of the poor on gin, but the problem did not disappear completely: in 1836, Charles Dickens still felt it an important enough issue to echo Hogarth's observations in Sketches by Boz . Like Hogarth, Dickens noted that poverty rather than gin itself
18204-413: 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
18368-585: The middle there is a huge machine, like a merry-go-round, which people are boarding. At the top is a goat, written below which is "Who'l Ride". The people are scattered around the picture with a sense of disorder , while the progress of the well dressed people towards the ride in the middle shows the foolishness of the crowd in buying stock in the South Sea Company , which spent more time issuing stock than anything else. Other early works include The Lottery (1724) ; The Mystery of Masonry brought to Light by
18532-558: The moral accompanying the print: The generous Steed in hoary Age, Subdu'd by Labour lies; And mourns a cruel Master's rage, While Nature Strength denies. The tender Lamb o'er drove and faint, Amidst expiring Throws; Bleats forth it's innocent complaint And dies beneath the Blows. Inhuman Wretch! say whence proceeds This coward Cruelty? What Int'rest springs from barb'rous deeds? What Joy from Misery? The cruelty has also advanced to include abuse of people. A dray crushes
18696-419: 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
18860-429: The murder takes place in a graveyard, said to be St Pancras but suggested by John Ireland to resemble Marylebone ; an owl and a bat fly around the scene; the moon shines down on the crime; the clock strikes one for the end of the witching hour . The composition of the image may allude to Anthony van Dyck 's The Arrest of Christ . A lone Good Samaritan appears again: among the snarling faces of Tom's accusers,
19024-670: The native English small beer and ale , and those who live in Gin Lane as destroyed by their addiction to the foreign spirit of gin; but, as with so many of Hogarth's works, closer inspection uncovers other targets of his satire, and reveals that the poverty of Gin Lane and the prosperity of Beer Street are more intimately connected than they at first appear. Gin Lane shows shocking scenes of infanticide , starvation , madness, decay, and suicide , while Beer Street depicts industry, health, bonhomie, and thriving commerce; but there are contrasts and subtle details which some critics believe allude to
19188-401: 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
19352-425: 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
19516-474: The overseers of the poor, who were too often interested in the posts only for the social status and monetary rewards they could bring. Below the text the authorship is established: Designed by W. Hogarth, Published according to Act of Parliament. 1 Feb.. 1751 The Act of Parliament referred to is the Engraving Copyright Act 1734 . Many of Hogarth's earlier works had been reproduced in great numbers without his authority or any payment of royalties , and he
19680-482: The pawnbroker's sign forms a huge corrupted cross for the steeple: the people of Gin Lane have chosen to worship elsewhere. Townley's verses are equally strong in their condemnation of the spirit: 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
19844-422: The pictures still carry the wealth of detail and subtle references that are characteristic of Hogarth. In common with other prints by Hogarth, such as Beer Street and Gin Lane , The Four Stages of Cruelty was issued as a warning against immoral behaviour, showing the easy path from childish thug to convicted criminal. His aim was to correct "that barbarous treatment of animals, the very sight of which renders
20008-513: The pillars of British prosperity in the balance of trade. (Both later changed their minds – by 1703 Davenant was warning that " 'Tis a growing fad among the common people and may in time prevail as much as opium with the Turks", while by 1727 Defoe was arguing in support of anti-gin legislation.) In the heyday of the industry there was no quality control whatsoever; gin was frequently mixed with turpentine , and licences for distilling required only
20172-490: The principles of beauty and grace which he, a real child of Rococo , saw realized in serpentine lines (the Line of Beauty ). 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. For instance, Paul Sandby produced several caricatures against Hogarth's treatise. Hogarth wrote also
20336-461: The print, to use a vulgar expression, tells . Every part is full of "strange images of death". It is perfectly amazing and astounding to look at. The critic William Hazlitt shared Lamb's view that Hogarth was unfairly judged on the coarseness of his subject matter rather than for his skill as an artist. He singled out Gin Lane and The Enraged Musician as particular examples of Hogarth's imagination and considered that "the invention shewn in
20500-403: The production and then consumption of domestic gin. In Beer Street , people are shown as healthy, happy and prosperous, while in Gin Lane , they are scrawny, lazy and careless. The woman at the front of Gin Lane , who lets her baby fall to its death, echoes the tale of Judith Dufour , who strangled her baby so she could sell its clothes for gin money. The prints were published in support of
20664-518: The prosperity of Beer Street as the cause of the misery found in Gin Lane. The gin crisis was severe. From 1689 onward the English government encouraged the industry of distilling , as it helped prop up grain prices, which were then low, and increase trade, particularly with England's colonial possessions . Imports of French wine and spirits were banned to encourage the industry at home. Indeed, Daniel Defoe and Charles Davenant , among others, particularly Whig economists, had seen distilling as one of
20828-450: The reproduction of his and other artists' work. The result was the Engravers' 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. In 1743–1745, Hogarth painted the six pictures of Marriage A-la-Mode ( National Gallery, London ),
20992-527: The rest of the picture, made clear in the text at the bottom of the scene: While various Scenes of sportive Woe, The Infant Race employ, And tortur'd Victims bleeding shew, The Tyrant in the Boy. Behold! a Youth of gentler Heart, To spare the Creature's pain, O take, he cries—take all my Tart, But Tears and Tart are vain. Learn from this fair Example—You Whom savage Sports delight, How Cruelty disgusts
21156-432: The result of a "wayward humour" outside of his normal habits. Art historian Allan Cunningham also had strong feelings about the series: I wish it had never been painted. There is indeed great skill in the grouping, and profound knowledge of character; but the whole effect is gross, brutal and revolting. A savage boy grows into a savage man, and concludes a career of cruelty and outrage by an atrocious murder, for which he
21320-550: 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 . 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
21484-563: The same sale. Other minor variations on Gin Lane exist – the second state gives the falling child an older face, perhaps in an attempt to diminish the horror, but these too were widely available and thus inexpensive. Copies of the originals by other engravers, such as Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen , Samuel Davenport , and Henry Adlard were also in wide circulation in the 19th century. The iconic Gin Lane, with its memorable composition, has lent itself to reinterpretation by modern satirists. Steve Bell reused it in his political cartoon Free
21648-517: The same time that Fielding was approaching the subject in literature. Paulson thinks it likely that they planned the literature and the imagery together as a campaign. Charles Knight said that in Beer Street Hogarth had been "rapt beyond himself" and given the characters depicted in the scene an air of "tipsy jollity". Charles Lamb considered Gin Lane sublime, and focused on the almost invisible funeral procession that Hogarth had added beyond
21812-506: 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." Hogarth then enrolled in another drawing school, in Covent Garden , shortly after it opened in November 1724, which
21976-419: The scene. The only businesses that flourish serve the gin industry: gin sellers; a distiller (the aptly named Kilman); 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 the undertaker, for whom Hogarth implies at least
22140-480: 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. 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
22304-456: The shoulder of his light-hued, ragged coat, shows him to be receiving welfare from the parish of St Giles , in accordance with the Poor Act 1697 , which required all recipients of parish charity to wear a badge with the parish's initials on their right shoulder. Hogarth used this notorious slum area as the background for many of his works including Gin Lane and Noon , part of the Four Times of
22468-496: The sign of the Barley Mow , a blacksmith or cooper sits with a foaming tankard in one hand and a leg of meat in the other in the later states. In the first states he holds or lifts a Frenchman by the belt. 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
22632-453: The slogan: Drunk for a penny Dead drunk for twopence Clean straw for nothing Other images of despair and madness fill the scene: a disturbed man 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 mother rushes from the house screaming in horror; a barber has taken his own life in the dilapidated attic of his barber-shop, ruined because nobody can afford
22796-446: 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 at Tyburn for murdering her husband. William Makepeace Thackeray wrote: This famous set of pictures contains
22960-504: The story of the Virgin and the story of the Passion ." In other works, he parodies Leonardo da Vinci 's Last Supper . According to Paulson, Hogarth is subverting the religious establishment and the orthodox belief in an immanent God who intervenes in the lives of people and produces miracles . Indeed, Hogarth was a Deist , a believer in a God who created the universe but takes no direct hand in
23124-515: The streets of our metropolis so distressing to every feeling mind". Hogarth loved animals, picturing himself with his pug in a self-portrait, and marking the graves of his dogs and birds at his home in Chiswick . Hogarth deliberately portrayed the subjects of the engravings with little subtlety since he meant the prints to be understood by "men of the lowest rank" when seen on the walls of workshops or taverns . The images themselves, as with Beer Street and Gin Lane , were roughly drawn, lacking
23288-418: 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. Much as the tailors are ignored by their master and left to continue working,
23452-423: The three essays written by Reynolds for the months of September through November 1759 are directed at Hogarth. In them, Reynolds argues that this "connoisseur" has a "servile attention to minute exactness" and questions their idea 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
23616-405: The time of the first print, Hogarth had transformed him into a threadbare, scrawny, and somewhat dreamy character who has more in common with the inhabitants of Gin Lane than those who populate the scene below him. Most simply, he may be a subtle aside on the artist's status in society—he carries the palette that Hogarth made his trademark, which appears in several of his self-portraits. However, he
23780-400: The time. Freke had been involved in the high-profile attempt to secure the body of condemned rioter Bosavern Penlez for dissection in 1749. Aside from the over-enthusiastic dissection of the body and the boiling of the bones in situ , the image portrays the procedure as it would have been carried out. Two skeletons to the rear left and right of the print are labelled as James Field ,
23944-442: The tools of their trade about them – while in Gin Lane the people drink instead of working. 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
24108-410: The traditional day for cock-shying ); another boy ties a bone to a dog's tail—tempting, but out of reach; a pair of fighting cats are hung by their tails and taunted by a jeering group of boys; in the bottom left-hand corner a dog is set on a cat, with the latter's intestines spilling out onto the ground; and in the rear of the picture another cat tied to two bladders is thrown from a high window. In
24272-449: The view, While Pity charms the sight. The other boys carry out equally barbaric acts: the two boys at the top of the steps are burning the eyes out of a bird with a hot needle heated by the link-boy 's torch; the boys in the foreground are throwing at a cock (perhaps an allusion to a nationalistic enmity towards the French , and a suggestion that the action takes place on Shrove Tuesday ,
24436-419: The wide availability of the prints meant that individual examples did not generally command high prices. While there were no paintings of the two images to sell, and Hogarth did not sell the plates in his lifetime, variations and rare impressions existed and fetched decent prices when offered at auction. The first (proof) and second states of Beer Street were issued with the image of the Frenchman being lifted by
24600-405: 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. The sign-painter is the most difficult figure of the two images to characterise. He appeared in preliminary sketches as another jolly fat archetype of Beer Street—but by
24764-674: 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: 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
24928-542: Was a bestseller. For a long period, during the mid-18th century, Hogarth tried to achieve the status of a history painter , but did not earn much respect in this field. The painter, and later founder of the Royal Academy of Arts , Joshua Reynolds , was highly critical of Hogarth's style and work. According to art historian David Bindman , in Dr Johnson 's serial of essays for London's Universal Chronicle , The Idler ,
25092-464: Was a founding Governor of the Foundling Hospital . The Four Stages of Cruelty The Four Stages of Cruelty is a series of four printed engravings published by English artist William Hogarth in 1751. Each print depicts a different stage in the life of the fictional Tom Nero. Beginning with the torture of a dog as a child in the First stage of cruelty , Nero progresses to beating his horse as
25256-504: Was a pupil". Since Ireland identifies him as the master of Nourse, he undoubtedly means John Freke, an acquaintance of Hogarth's and surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital from 1729 to 1755 and a Governor from 1736 to 1756. The dissection could be taking place at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where all three surgeons were based, but it also has features of the Cutlerian Theatre of the Royal College of Physicians near Newgate (particularly
25420-454: Was a robber who was executed in 1747. The motif of the lone "good man" is carried through to this final plate, where one of the academics points at the skeleton of James Field, indicating the inevitable outcome for those who start down the path of cruelty. The composition of the scene is a pastiche of the frontispiece of Andreas Vesalius 's De humani corporis fabrica , and it possibly also borrows from Quack Physicians' Hall (c. 1730) by
25584-515: Was also a popular portrait painter . In 1745, he painted actor David Garrick as Richard III , 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. In 1746, a sketch of Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat , afterwards beheaded on Tower Hill, had an exceptional success when turned into an etching. In 1740, he created
25748-522: Was an engraver 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 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
25912-416: 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." William Hogarth was born at Bartholomew Close in London to Richard Hogarth, a poor Latin school teacher and textbook writer, and Anne Gibbons. In his youth he was apprenticed to
26076-418: Was defeated by Broughton and retired in 1750. On Taylor's death in 1757, Hogarth produced a number of sketches of him wrestling Death, probably for his tomb. According to Werner Busch, the composition alludes to Rembrandt's painting Balaam's Ass (1626). In an echo of the first plate, there is but one person who shows concern for the welfare of the tormented horse. To the left of Nero, and almost unseen,
26240-710: Was initiated as a Freemason 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. 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',
26404-629: Was keen to protect his artistic property, so had encouraged his friends in Parliament to pass a law to protect the rights of engravers. Hogarth had been so instrumental in pushing the Bill through Parliament that on passing it became known as the "Hogarth Act". In the second plate, the scene is Thavies Inn Gate (sometimes ironically written as Thieves Inn Gate), one of the Inns of Chancery which housed associations of lawyers in London. Tom Nero has grown up and become
26568-584: Was run by Sir James Thornhill , serjeant painter to the king . 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 of St Paul's Cathedral , and Greenwich Hospital . Hogarth became a member of the Rose and Crown Club , with Peter Tillemans , George Vertue , Michael Dahl , and other artists and connoisseurs. By April 1720, Hogarth
26732-446: Was still prohibitively expensive for most of the poor, the lower prices did allow him to reach a larger market, and more importantly rendered the prints cheap enough to display in taverns and coffee houses before a wider audience. Hogarth also had an eye on his copyright: the lower prices meant there was less chance of the images being reproduced and sold without Hogarth's permission. Although Hogarth had been instrumental in pushing through
26896-534: Was the cause of the misery: Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater; and until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance that, divided among his family, would furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour. The vast numbers of prints of Beer Street and Gin Lane and The Four Stages of Cruelty may have generated profits for Hogarth, but
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