Hogarth, William

Hogarth, William (1697–1764), British painter and engraver. In 1726 he designed 12 large engravings for Butler's Hudibras. In 1732 The Harlot's Progress introduced his ‘modern moral subjects’; it was followed by The Rake's Progress (1733–5) and Marriage à la Mode (1743–5; London, National Gallery). This highly original genre consisted of a series of paintings, popularized through engravings, which tell a story that is topical, erotic, spiced with contemporary portraits, and yet comments with humanity and passion on social and political vices and corruption. Hogarth also published a work on aesthetics, The Analysis of Beauty (1753). His series of engravings inspired numerous plays and novels. Fielding, and later Smollett, compared characters and scenes in their novels to the prints of Hogarth. His popularity soared in the early 19th cent., with essays by Hazlitt and Lamb that emphasized his literary qualities. He influenced Thackeray and Dickens, who, in the preface to Oliver Twist, writes that he had never met ‘the miserable reality’ of low-life London except in Hogarth. Hogarth's Portrait of the Painter and His Pug (1745, London, Tate Gallery) shows his aggressive image resting on volumes of Shakespeare, Milton, and Swift and lays claim to his place within a British artistic tradition.