William
Hogarth, the son of Richard Hogarth, a Latin teacher, was born in
Smithfield, London, in 1697. Hogarth's
father opened a coffee-house in London but the venture was unsuccessful
and in 1707 he was confined to Fleet Prison for debt. Hogarth was
released five years later during an amnesty.
When Hogarth was sixteen he was apprenticed to Ellis Gamble, a silverplate
engraver. By 1720 Hogarth had own business engraving book plates and
painting portraits. Around this time Hogarth met the artist, Sir James
Thornhill. Impressed by his history paintings, Hogarth made regular
visits to Thornhill's free art academy in Covent Garden.
The two men became close friends and Hogarth eventually married Thornhill's
daughter, Jane.During the 1720s Hogarth worked for the printseller,
Philip Overton. Hogarth also started to produce political satires.
In 1726 Hogarth published The Punishments
of Lemuel Gulliver, a satire on the prime minister, Robert
Walpole.
Hogarth also painted pictures that told a moral story. The first of
these, The Harlots Progress (1732),
shows the downfall of a country girl at the hands of people living
in London. Other examples of this approach included The
Rake's Progress (1733-35) and Industry
and Idleness (1747).
By the 1730s Hogarth was an established artist but he suffered from
printsellers who used his work without paying royalties. In 1735 Hogarth
manages to persuade his friends in Parliament to pass the Engravers'
Copyright Act. Later that year, Hogarth established St. Martin's Lane
Academy, a guild for professional artists and a school for young artists.
After a period painting portraits of the rich and famous, Hogarth
returned in 1751 to producing prints of everyday life. Prints such
as Beer Street, Gin
Lane and the Four Stages of Cruelty
were extremely popular and sold in large numbers.
In The Election Hogarth produced four pictures that illustrated
the Oxfordshire parliamentary election of 1754. Taken together, the
four paintings show the evolving sequence of events during election
day. The first three paintings, Election
Entertainment, Canvassing for
Votes and The Polling
provides details of the type of corruption that took place in 18th
century elections. In the final painting, Chairing
the Member the winning Tory candidate's
supporters celebrate his victory.
In 1762 Hogarth published his anti-war satire The
Times. This work upset a large number of MPs and one of
the country's leading politicians, John Wilkes
attacked Hogarth in his newspaper, The
North Briton. Hogarth retaliated by producing his engraving,
John Wilkes, Esq.In the engraving
Wilkes is wearing a horn-like wig and holds his symbolic cap of liberty
in such a way as to make a halo for himself.
Soon after producing his print of Wilkes, Hogarth became seriously
ill. In July 1763 he had a paralytic seizure but the following year
he started work again and in April, 1764, produced his final print
Tailpiece: The Bathos (1764).
William Hogarth died on 25th October, 1764.
William Hogarth,
An Election: Chairing the Member (1754)
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