William Hogarth

William Hogarth
William Hogarth, The Painter and his Pug, 1745. Self-portrait with his pug, Trump, in Tate Britain, London.
Born(1697-11-10)10 November 1697
London, England
Died26 October 1764(1764-10-26) (aged 66)
London, England
Resting placeSt. Nicholas's Churchyard, Church Street, Chiswick, London
Known forPainter, engraver, satirist
SpouseJane Thornhill
Patron(s)Mary Edwards (1705–1743)[1]
Signature

William Hogarth FRSA (/ˈhɡɑːrθ/; 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",[2] and he 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".[3]

Hogarth was born in London to a lower-middle-class family. In his youth he took up an apprenticeship with an engraver, but did not complete the apprenticeship. His father underwent periods of mixed fortune, and was at one time imprisoned in lieu of payment of outstanding debts, an event that is thought to have informed William's paintings and prints with a hard edge.[4]

Influenced by French and Italian painting and engraving,[5] Hogarth's works are mostly satirical caricatures, sometimes bawdily sexual,[6] mostly of the first rank of realistic portraiture. They became widely popular and mass-produced via prints in his lifetime, and he was by far the most significant English artist of his generation. Charles Lamb deemed Hogarth's images to be books, filled with "the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of words. Other pictures we look at; his pictures we read."[7][8]

  1. ^ "William Hogarth – Miss Mary Edwards : The Frick Collection". collections.frick.org.
  2. ^ "The Rococo Influence in British Art – dummies". dummies. Retrieved 23 June 2017.
  3. ^ According to Elizabeth Einberg, "by the time he died in October 1764 he had left so indelible a mark on the history of British painting that the term 'Hogarthian' remains instantly comprehensible even today as a valid description of a wry, satirical perception of the human condition." Hogarth the Painter, London: Tate Gallery, 1997, p. 17.
  4. ^ Ronald Paulson, Hogarth, vol. 1: The 'Modern Moral Subject', 1697–1732 (New Brunswick 1991), pp. 26–37.
  5. ^ Frederick Antal, Hogarth and His Place in European Art (London 1962); Robin Simon, Hogarth, France and British Art: The rise of the arts in eighteenth-century Britain (London 2007).
  6. ^ Bernd W. Krysmanski, Hogarth's Hidden Parts: Satiric Allusion, Erotic Wit, Blasphemous Bawdiness and Dark Humour in Eighteenth-Century English Art (Hildesheim, Zurich and New York: Georg Olms 2010).
  7. ^ Lamb, Charles, The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, E.V. Lucas Publishing, 1811, Vol. 1, p. 82, "On the genius and character of Hogarth".
  8. ^ Charles Lamb, "On the genius and character of Hogarth; with some remarks on a passage in the writings of the late Mr. Barry".

Developed by StudentB