The recent ‘Hogarth, Place and Progress’ exhibition held at the Sir John Soan’s Museum in London (9/10/19-5/1/20) celebrated the creative story telling embedded within many of the artist’s most well-known, and lesser known works. This exhibition marked the first time that Hogarth’s focus upon social commentary through his narrative works, had been the focus of an exhibition.
Hogarth was a social critic and satirist, who described his serial paintings and engravings, ‘Modern Moral Subjects.’ They tell stories about contemporary life, and can be compared to contemporary literary works, such as Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722). A Harlot’s Progress and A Rake’s Progress are designed to demonstrate that a miserable death can be expected by those who are tempted to break society’s moral and social codes.
The artist became widely popular and mass-produced via prints in his lifetime, a popularity that negatively impacted his artistic credibility amongst the artistic establishment in the nineteenth century. In the Soan Museum exhibition, which gathered sequences of his work together in one place, there was an emphasis upon relating Hogarth’s art to the geography of London. The Rake’s Progress follows the decline and fall of a young man whose moral choices take him from an elegant house in the West end to Bedlam.
The Rake’s Progress: 8 The Madhouse
The Rake chooses a life of idle pleasures and superficial affluence, betraying love and family, represented by the girlfriend he leaves behind. The story-telling in this series is sophisticated and multi-layered, with characters and scenarios developed over the course of the sequence.
In another series, The Harlot is shown rejecting the respectable values of her county upbringing and sets off upon a moral journey in which she pays a high price for her moral choices. After arriving from the country to start work City of London, the Harlot soon becomes the mistress of a Jewish merchant, and moves on to work brothel before her inevitable and early death from sexual disease.
In the engraved series, Industry and Idleness, the destinies of the two apprentices are set up in the first scene; Tom Idle sleep at his loom while Francis Goodchild works on. The narrative enables us to follow the progress of both men to destinies that were determined in the first scene. Idle ends up on the gallows at Tyburn. Goodchild becomes Lord Mayor of London. The series clearly employs the familiar literary technique of ‘foreshadowing’, that is, planting elements, themes and ideas in an earlier sequence that will ‘pay-off’ by the conclusion of the narrative.
Industry and Idleness: The fellow prentices at their looms
In his earlier years Hogarth Made salacious paintings for rakish patrons. However, he avoided excessive moralising and there are signs that he wanted to use art for the improvement of society, for example, in the Four Stages of Cruelty engravings. ‘While the moral choices are presented starkly….it has often been argued that Hogarth took a more ironical view of morality, identifying with Tom Idle more that the rather sanctimonious Francis Goodchild.’ (Bindman & Boucher et al, 2019, p. 13).
The narratives depicted by Hogarth comprise both social commentary on the 18th century, as well as a deeper examination of the spiritual and moral journey that could be undertaken by their protagonists. Marriage a la Mode describes the decline and fall of a young couple who make the worst possible choices. In the opening scene, a marriage contract is being drawn up, and Hogarth’s skilful narrative technique plants many themes that are to be developed over the sequence that illustrates the tragic story of this young couple.
Marriage a la Mode 1. The Marriage Settlement
In the years since he died, Hogarth’s reputation has constantly evolved. The nineteenth century critic, Charles Lamb rejects a contemporary view of the artist’s works ‘as simply knockabout humour, going so far as to compare the artist with Shakespeare in his universality:
“His graphic representations are indeed books: they share the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of words. Other pictures we look at - his prints we read.” (Lamb, 1838, pp 182-217).
Hogarth has also been compared to satirists in the same tradition as Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. David Bindman argues that Hogarth’s best known works ‘are all narratives that have the complexity of novels or stage plays, to which they have been frequently compared.’ (Bindman & Boucher et al, 2019. p. 25)
In 2018, the Rose Theatre in Kingston staged a play, ‘Hogarth’s Progress’ by Nick Dear. The play’s notice suggests audiences should ‘Prepare for a heady, raucous nose-dive into 18th-century London's high society and debauched underworld as we follow the young newlywed William, on the rise to fame, on a dizzying and eventful night out and he questions the nature and value of art along the way.’
The play’s approach to Hogarth is that by showing up the moral failings of the privileged, he was ridiculing the pretentions of his social superiors. However, Bindman (Bindman, Boucher et al. 2019. p 25) argues that wealthy people were his most significant patrons, and Hogarth was not attempting to challenge the status quo, but simply to attack immorality amongst all echelons of society.
Horace Walpole (Walpole, 1771. p. 358) talked of Hogarth as ‘that great and original genius’ saying he ‘caught the manners and follies of an age living as they rise’ and that ‘Amidst all the pleasantry he observes the true end of comedy, reformation; there is always a moral to his pictures.’ With his membership of this Collective secure, it is clear that Hogarth is first and foremost, a master-storyteller.