Baroque Age
William Hogarth (1697–1764)
British Rococo and the French Eighteenth Century painter.
William Hogarth made English painting a narrative art of the street, the marriage contract, and the gin shop. Born in London in 1697 and trained as an engraver, he painted and then published series — Marriage A-la-Mode, A Rake's Progress, Gin Lane — that were meant to be read as much as seen. He died in 1764.
Marriage A-la-Mode (National Gallery) is a six-picture satire of a bankrupt earl selling his son to a merchant's daughter; plate 1 is the signing of the settlement, plate 2 the weary Tête à Tête of the married pair. Gin Lane (1751) is the engraved counterpart: a London parish collapsing under cheap spirit. Rococo flourish and comic detail serve a moral argument.
Ronald Paulson's Yale biography is the standard modern life. The pictures and plates were public from the first — sold by subscription, copied, argued over — an English satire that used the closest available court style to scold the town.
The words the record keeps using: satiric, narrative, urban, moral, witty, crowded.
At a glance
- Lived 1697–1764
- Origin British
- Worked in London
- Era Baroque Age
- Movements Rococo and the French Eighteenth Century
- Mediums Oil on canvas, Engraving and etching
- Techniques Oil glazing, Burin engraving, Etching with drypoint
Works in the archive
- Marriage A-la-Mode: 2. The Tête à Tête, 1743 (National Gallery, London)
The morning after: the viscount slumps, the viscountess stretches, a steward leaves unpaid bills, and the house already shows the marriage's ruin. Second canvas of the six-picture series on a contracted match. - Marriage A-la-Mode: 1. The Marriage Settlement, 1743 (National Gallery, London)
An earl, gouty beside his family tree, sells his son to a merchant's daughter; the young couple ignore each other while lawyers settle the terms. The opening chapter of Marriage A-la-Mode, the contract as a roomful of… - Gin Lane, 1751 (Print; impressions in many public collections (designed as a pair with Beer Street))
A St Giles parish collapses: a child falls from a drunken mother's lap, the pawnshop thrives, the buildings lean. Issued in 1751 as the dark half of a pair with Beer Street, it is Hogarth's most famous argument in print.
What was said
Paulson's Yale biography presents Hogarth as the inventor of the modern moral subject: painted series meant to be read like chapters and then sold as prints to a London public.
Marriage A-la-Mode is read as a single argument in six rooms: a contracted match that ruins both families, each canvas a chapter of objects and glances the viewer is meant to decode.
Gin Lane, issued as a pair with Beer Street, is a plate designed for cheap, wide sale — etching and engraving as a civic sermon, not as a private cabinet picture.
What would William make of your idea?
The Artiquity Studio makes a new picture in this hand's manner from a few words or a photograph — grounded in the technique, palette and subjects recorded above, and always credited "after William Hogarth", never passed off as a found work. Open the Studio with William · Keep a life moment the way William would · Pictures made after William