Hosannas for Hogarth

An enthusiasm for 18th century painter, illustrator, and engraver William Hogarth (1697-1764) is one of the million ties that bind my wife and I together.

Among other things, Hogarth was known for drawing moral allegories, satirical and otherwise. I referenced his contrasting Beer Street and Gin Lane (1751) in my book No Applause to discuss the radical change that came about after inns and pubs (which served beer and ale) began to be supplanted by saloons, which were much wilder, when whiskey and other distilled spirits began to become widely available. Curious how that applies to vaudeville? Buy the book!

Hogarth was a central figure of that marvelous age when, thanks to the recent invention of newspapers, and the popularity of coffee houses as social gathering places in London, something quite close to what we recognize as pop culture came into being. There was a lot of cross-fertilization among actors, playwrights, novelists, poets, writers of non-fiction, visual artists, political figures and other creative types and eminences. There was a strong narrative element in Hogarth’s art, not at all unlike that of his writer friends like Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne. (By contrast, Joshua Reynolds, founder of the Royal Academy, was not a fan). Hogarth’s 1745 self-portrait The Painter and His Pug (above) shows him leaning on the works of Shakespeare, Milton, and Swift, indicating the importance of the written word to the stimulation of his imagination. (The dog, as it happens, had the unfortunate name of “Trump”). Also, given the nature of Hogarth’s allegories, I’d have to conjecture that Bunyan was important him as well.

As it happens, this year we are three centuries out from some of Hogarth’s earliest well-known works, ones with theatrical themes, A Just View of the British Stage, and Masquerades and Operas, both created in 1724. Among his theatrical subjects over the years were a portrait of his friend David Garrick, portraits of cast members ofJohn Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, a depiction of children performing Dryden’sThe Indian Emperour, and Actresses Strolling in a Barn. I could stare at his painting illustrating Southwark Fair for hours. A lot of Hogarth works are bawdy in that same wonderful two-faced spirit of Richardson and Defoe, which straddles both sex and moralizing at the same time. His A Harlot’s Progress (1731) and A Rake’s Progress (1734-35), perhaps his best known works, are in that vein. (There is a 2006 British TV movie based on A Harlot’s Progress starring Toby Jones as Hogarth. Meanwhile the 1946 RKO horror film Bedlam was inspired by A Rake’s Progress). Hogarth’s series Marriage-A-La-Mode (1743-45) unavoidably evokes the Restoration comedy by Dryden with the same name.

You’ll often find in my writing seemingly irrational or overblown (yet nonethless historically demonstratable) claims about the ways small acts of meanness find their ultimate consummation in bloodbaths. It may be summed up by the formulation “All Roads Lead to the Arena”. Human sacrifice as spectacle was once commonplace, almost universal in human culture, and has been so more recently than most people allow themselves to think. Hogarth deals with this repeatedly from The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751) to The Cockpit, which depicts cockfighting (1759).

The theme of his twelve part Industry and Idleness (1747) reminds me of a delightful fact about the end of Hogarth’s life. On his death bed he was composing a reply to a letter he had received from Benjamin Franklin. Poor Richard, eat your heart out!

Stay tuned for my post on Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975) which takes visual inspiration from several Hogarth works.