William Hogarth: The Complete Story
William Hogarth grew up beside a debtors' prison that held his father, invented the picture story that became the comic strip, and pushed the first copyright law for artists through Parliament himself. It is still called Hogarth's Act.
Gin, marriage markets, quack doctors, and cruelty: no painter ever put his own city on trial more thoroughly, or protected his fellow artists better.
William Hogarth at a glance:
1697: born in Smithfield, London; his father's failed Latin coffeehouse lands the family in the Fleet debtors' prison.
1732: A Harlot's Progress invents the picture story; pirate engravers copy it within weeks.
1735: parliament passes the Engravers' Copyright Act, drafted at his urging and carrying his name ever since.
1740: paints Captain Coram for the new Foundling Hospital, the portrait he judged his best.
1764: dies at Chiswick; his sworn enemy John Wilkes outlives him, but the prints outlive everyone.
The Fleet prison childhood
Hogarth was born in London on November 10, 1697. When he was ten, his schoolmaster father was locked in the Fleet debtors' prison for about four years after a Latin-speaking coffeehouse scheme failed.
Hogarth never mentioned it in writing, but he drew debt, ruin, and institutions swallowing people for the rest of his life. He escaped through an apprenticeship engraving silver.
1732: the picture story is invented
A Harlot's Progress, six scenes following a country girl into London vice and death, appeared in 1732 and sold out instantly as engravings, with pirate copies on the street within days.
A Rake's Progress followed in 1735, and Marriage A-la-Mode, his demolition of the aristocratic marriage market, in 1745.
Nobody had told a modern story in sequential images before; every comic strip and storyboard descends from these frames.
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Hogarth's Act, 1735
Furious at the pirates, Hogarth lobbied Parliament in person, and the Engravers' Copyright Act of 1735, the first copyright law for visual artists anywhere, is still known as Hogarth's Act.
He timed the publication of A Rake's Progress to the day it took effect. As a governor of the Foundling Hospital he persuaded fellow artists to donate paintings, which quietly created Britain's first public art gallery.
The myth of the scold
Because Gin Lane of 1751 works like a public health poster of genius, Hogarth gets remembered as a finger-wagging moralist.
The pictures are funnier and kinder than that: the satire lands on institutions, quacks, and markets more than on their victims, and his portraits, The Shrimp Girl, his six servants, his pug Trump, are painted with open affection.
In 1748 he was arrested at Calais as an English spy while sketching the town gate, and put the whole absurd episode straight into a painting.
Chiswick, and where to see him
Hogarth published The Analysis of Beauty in 1753, arguing that a serpentine line underlies visual pleasure, and died at his London house on October 26, 1764. The original Rake's Progress paintings hang in Sir John Soane's Museum, Marriage A-la-Mode at the National Gallery, the pug self-portrait at Tate Britain, and his country retreat, Hogarth's House in Chiswick, is open free.
The foundling gallery
With the retired sea captain Thomas Coram he helped launch the Foundling Hospital for abandoned children, and painted its founder with all the grandeur usually rented by lords.
He persuaded fellow artists to donate pictures to its walls, quietly creating Britain's first public art gallery a generation before the Royal Academy existed.
Childless, he and Jane fostered foundlings themselves. The charity was not a subject; it was the household.
The pug and The Bruiser
In his 1745 self-portrait the palette rests beside his pug, Trump, who resembles his owner on purpose: loyal, stubborn, ready to bite.
When the satirist Charles Churchill attacked him in verse, Hogarth scraped his own copper plate and reissued himself as The Bruiser, a bear with a club. He fought in print the way he painted: personally.
On the palette in that self-portrait he engraved the line of beauty. Theory and dog, equal billing.
The election circus
The Election series of 1754 follows one corrupt country contest across four canvases: the bribed dinner, the canvassing, the polling of the dying, the chaired victor about to topple.
The actor David Garrick bought the set; it hangs in Sir John Soane's Museum, a few rooms from A Rake's Progress.
Politics has changed less than the wigs. Every campaign season the pictures circulate again, which would have delighted and enraged him in equal measure.
The William Hogarth questions that keep coming up
What is A Rake's Progress? Eight scenes from 1735 following an heir from inheritance to madhouse. The original paintings are in Sir John Soane's Museum in London.
What is the line of beauty? The S-shaped curve Hogarth put at the center of his 1753 treatise The Analysis of Beauty, and painted onto his own self-portrait's palette.
Why is Hogarth called the father of the comic strip? His Progresses of the 1730s were the first modern stories told in a numbered sequence of images, the direct ancestor of sequential art.
Where can I see Hogarth? Sir John Soane's Museum, the National Gallery, Tate Britain, the Foundling Museum, and Hogarth's House in Chiswick, all in London.
How much does a Hogarth cost? Paintings rarely surface. The prints, in circulation since 1732, remain some of the cheapest great art in existence: fine impressions for a few hundred pounds.
Did Hogarth ever leave England? Twice, to France; he was arrested at Calais in 1748 for sketching the town gate, and answered the insult with O the Roast Beef of Old England. Travel confirmed all his prejudices.
More secrets to unlock
Property rights for pictures
The 1735 Engravers' Copyright Act, the first law anywhere protecting artists from piracy, carries his name three centuries later. The debtor's son wrote property rights for pictures into English law.
