_ANECDOTES OF AN ARTIST._
"By heaven, and not a master, taught."
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF HOGARTH PAINTING THE COMIC MUSE.]
When Leonardo da Vinci lay upon his death-bed, Francis the First,
actuated by that instinctive reverence which great minds invariably
feel for each other, visited him in his chamber. An attendant
informing the painter that the king was come to inquire after
his health, he raised himself from the pillow, a lambent gleam
of gratitude for the honour lighted up his eyes, and he made an
effort to speak. The exertion was too much; he fell back; and
Francis stooping to support him, this great artist expired in his
arms. Affected with the awful catastrophe, the king heaved a sigh
of sympathetic sorrow, and left the bed-chamber in tears. He was
immediately surrounded by a crowd of those kind-hearted nobles who
delight in soothing the sorrows of a sovereign; and one of them
entreating him not to indulge his grief, added, as a consolatory
reflection, "Consider, sire, this man was but a painter." "I do,"
replied the monarch; "and I at the same time consider, that though,
as a king, I could make a thousand such as you, the Deity alone can
make such a painter as Leonardo da Vinci."
Shall I be permitted to adopt this remark, and, without any
diminution of the Italian's well-earned fame, assert that the eulogy
is equally appropriate to the Englishman whose name is at the head
of this chapter; for he was not the follower, but the leader of a
class, and became a painter from divine impulse rather than human
instruction.
The biographers who have written of artists, especially if the
hero of their history was of the Dutch school, generally began by
informing us that he received the rudiments of his art from the great
Van A--, who was a pupil of the divine Van B--, first the disciple,
and afterwards the rival, of the immortal and never enough to be
admired Vander C.
This _palette pedigree_ was not the boast of William Hogarth; he was
the pupil,--the disciple,--the worshipper of nature!
I do not learn that his family either obtained a grant of lands from
our first William, or _flourished_ before the Conquest; but from
Burn's History of Westmoreland, it appears that his grandfather was
an honest yeoman, the inhabitant of a small tenement in the vale
of Bampton, a village fifteen miles north of Kendal, and had three
sons. The eldest, in conformity to ancient custom, succeeded to
the _title_, _honour_, and _estate_ of his father, became a yeoman of
Bampton, and proprietor of the family freehold.
The second was not endowed with either land or beeves, but had in
their stead a large portion of broad humour and wild original genius.
Like his nephew, he grasped the whip of satire; and though his lash
was not twisted with much skill, nor brandished with much grace, it
was probably felt by those on whom his strokes were inflicted, more
than would one of the most exquisite workmanship.
He was the Shakspeare of his village, and his dramas were the delight
of the country; though, being written by an uneducated yeoman, it may
naturally be supposed they were sufficiently coarse. Mr. Nichols,
in his Anecdotes, tells us that he has seen a whole bundle of them,
and _want of grammar, metre, sense, and decency is their invariable
characteristic_. This may possibly be true, for in refinement
Westmoreland was many, many years behind the capital; and our
libraries contain _sundrie black-letter proofs_ that those _pithie_,
_pleasaunte_, and _merrie comedies_, which in the same century were
_enacted by the Kingis servantes_ with universal applause, had
similar _wants_; notwithstanding which, these unalloyed chronicles of
our ancestors' dulness are _now_ purchased at a price considerably
higher than virgin gold. Let it not from hence be imagined that
I mean to sanction one folly by the mention of another; but as
every human production is _relative_, if auld Hogarth, under the
circumstances he wrote, was the admiration of his neighbours, we
may fairly infer that his talents, properly cultivated, would, in
a more polished situation, have ensured him the admiration of his
contemporaries.[2]
Richard was the third son, and seems to have been intended for a
scholar,--the scholar of his family!--for he was educated at St.
Bees, in Westmoreland, and afterward kept a school in the same
county. Of learning he had a portion more than sufficient for his
office, for he wrote a Latin and English dictionary, which still
exists in MS., and one of his Latin letters, dated 1657, preserved
in the British Museum. However well he might be qualified for a
teacher, he had few pupils; and finding that his employment produced
neither honour nor profit, removed to London, and in Ship Court, Old
Bailey, renewed his profession.
It was fortunate for literature that Doctor Samuel Johnson was
not successful in an application for the place of a provincial
schoolmaster. It was fortunate for the arts that Richard Hogarth was
not able to establish a village school, in which situation he would
probably have qualified his son William for his successor; and those
talents which were calculated to instruct, astonish, and reform a
world, might have been wasted in teaching some half a hundred of the
young Westmoreland gentry to scan verses by their fingers, and call
English things by Latin names. The fates ordained otherwise; it was
his destiny to marry and reside in London, where were born unto him
one son and two daughters.
The girls had such instructions as qualified them to keep a shop;
and the son, who drew his first breath in this bustling world in the
year 1697, was author of the prints which, copied in little, form the
basis and give the value to these volumes.
Of his education we do not know much; but as his father appears to
have been a man of understanding, I suppose it was sufficient for the
situation in which he was intended to be placed. That it was not more
liberal, might arise from the old man finding erudition answer little
purpose to himself, and knowing that in a mechanic employment it is
rather a drawback than an assistance. Added to this, I believe young
Hogarth had not much bias _towards what has obtained the name_ of
learning. He must have been early attentive to the appearance of the
passions, and feeling a strong impulse to attempt their delineation,
left their names and derivations to the profound pedagogue, the
accurate grammarian, or more sage and solemn lexicographer. While
these labourers in the forest of science dug for the root, inquired
into the circulation of the sap, and planted brambles and birch round
the tree of knowledge, Hogarth had an higher aim,--an ambition to
display, in the true tints of nature, the rugged character of the
bark, the varied involutions of the branches, and the minute fibres
of the leaves.
The first notices of his prints were written in French, by a Swiss
named Rouquet, who in 1746 published "_Lettres de Monsieur * * à un
de ses Amis à Paris, pour lui expliquer les Estampes de Monsieur
Hogarth_."[3] This pamphlet describes the Harlot's and Rake's
Progress, Marriage à la Mode, and March to Finchley. In the remarks,
there is great reason to believe Rouquet was assisted by Hogarth, who
long afterwards expressed an intention of having them translated and
amplified. From such a junction, the reader will naturally expect
this book to contain more information than he will find.
The second publication was by the Reverend Doctor Trusler, and
extends farther than the preceding. It was begun immediately after
the artist's death, is baptized _Hogarth Moralized_, and interspersed
with seventy-eight engravings, printed on the same paper with the
letterpress. It contains two hundred pages, built upon Rouquet's
pamphlet, and the information he received from Mrs. Hogarth, who,
conceiving her property would be essentially injured by such a
publication, purchased the copyright. As the Doctor does not profess
_an intimate acquaintance_ with the arts, and confines himself to
_morality_!--I hope and believe my work will _not much_ clash with
his.
Of the artist and his prints, we had no regular narrative until the
appearance of Mr. Walpole's _Anecdotes of Painting_,--a work in which
refined taste and elegant diction gave rank and importance to a class
of men whose history, in the writings of preceding biographers,
exhibited little more than a catalogue of names, or a dry
uninteresting narrative of uninteresting events. To the pen of this
highly accomplished writer, William Hogarth owes a portion of his
deserved celebrity; for in near fifty pages devoted to his name, we
find the history of _a great man's excellencies and errors_ written
with the warmth of a friend and the fidelity of a chronologist.
With the first tolerably complete catalogue of his works, there was
such remarks upon their meaning and tendency, as have given the
artist a new character; for though his superlative merit secured him
admiration from the few who were able to judge, he was considered by
the crowd as a mere _caricaturist_, whose only aim was to burlesque
whatever he represented.
The Reverend Mr. Gilpin, in his valuable Essay on Prints, has
made some observations on one series by Hogarth. The remarks were
evidently written in haste; and though in a few instances I cannot
coincide with a gentleman for whose worth and talents I have the most
unfeigned respect, I am convinced that the candour of the Vicar of
Boldre will forgive the freedom taken with the critic on the _Rake's
Progress_.
In 1781, Mr. Nichols published his _Anecdotes_, which since that
time have been considerably enlarged. This work contains much useful
information relative to the artist; and much monumental miscellany
from the Grub Street Journal, and other ancient sources, concerning
his contemporaries, that were it not there enniched, would in all
probability have sunk in dark and endless night. Where Mr. Walpole
and preceding writers threw a hair-line, he cast the _antiquarian
drag-net_, and brought from the great deep a miraculous draught
of aquatic monsters and web-footed animals, that swam round the
triumphal bark of William Hogarth. For the information which I
received from his volume, he has my best thanks; where I depart from
his authorities, it is on the presumption that my own are better.
In many cases, it is more than possible both of us are frequently
mistaken.
In this I believe we agree,--_that young Hogarth had an early
predilection for the arts_, and his future acquirements give us
a right to suppose he must have studied the _curious sculptures_
which adorned his father's _spelling books_, though he neglected
the letterpress; and when he ought to have been storing his memory
with the eight parts of speech, was examining the _allegorical
apple-tree_ which decorates the grammar. These _first lines_ of
nature inclined his father to place him with an engraver; but workers
in copper were not numerous, neither did the demand for English
prints warrant a certainty of any additional number obtaining
constant employment. Engraving on plate seemed likely to afford a
more permanent subsistence, required some taste for drawing, and had
a remote alliance with the arts. These reasons being seconded by his
own inclination, our juvenile satirist was apprenticed to Mr. Ellis
Gamble, who kept a silversmith's shop in Cranbourn Alley, Leicester
Fields. This vendor of salvers and sauce-boats had in his own house
two or three _rare artisans_, whose employment was to engrave cyphers
and armorial symbols, not only on the articles their master sold,
but on any that he might have to mark from _cunning workmen_, in
silver or meaner metals. In this branch he covenanted to instruct
William Hogarth, who about the year 1712 became a practical student
in Mr. Gamble's _Attic Academy_. In this _school of science_,
we may fairly conjecture his first essays were the initials on
tea-spoons; he would next be taught the _art_ and _mystery_ of the
double cypher, where four letters in opposite directions are so
skilfully interwoven, that it requires almost an apprenticeship to
learn the art of deciphering them. Having conquered his alphabet,
he ascended to the representation of those heraldic monsters which
first grinned upon the shields of the holy army of crusaders, and
were from thence transferred to the massy tankards and ponderous
two-handled cups of their stately descendants. By copying this legion
of _hydras, gorgons, and chimeras dire_, he attained an early taste
for the ridiculous; and in the grotesque countenance of a baboon or
a bear, the cunning eye of a fox, or the fierce front of a rampant
lion, traced the characteristic varieties of the human physiognomy.
He soon felt that _the science which appertaineth unto the bearing of
coat armour_ was not suited to his taste or talents; and tired of the
amphibious many-coloured brood that people the fields of heraldry,
listened to the voice of Genius, which whispered him _to read the
mind's construction in the face_,--to study and delineate MAN.
As the first token of his turn for the _satirical_, it may be
worth recording, that while yet an apprentice, when upon a sultry
Sunday he once made an excursion to Highgate, two or three of his
companions and himself sought shelter and refreshment in one
of those convenient _caravanserais_ which so much abound in the
vicinity of the metropolis. In the same room were a party of thirsty
pedestrians, washing down the dust they had inhaled in their walk,
with _London porter_. Two of the company debating upon politics, and
the palm of victory being, at the moment Hogarth and his companions
entered, adjudged to the taller man, he very vociferously exulted
in his conquest, and added some sarcastic remarks on the diminutive
appearance of his adversary. The _little_ man had _a great soul_, and
having in his right hand a pewter pot, threw it with fatal force at
his opponent: it struck him in the forehead,--and
"As the mountain oak
Nods to the axe, till with a groaning sound
It sinks, and spreads its honours on the ground,"--
he sunk to the floor, and there,--as the divine Ossian would have
sublimely expressed it,--_The grey mist swam before his eyes. He lay
in the hall of mirth as a mountain pine, when it tumbles across the
rushy Loda.--He recovered; lifted up his bleeding head, and rolled
his full-orbed eyes around. He ascended as a pillar of smoke streaked
with fire, and streams of blood ran down his dark brown cheeks, like
torrents from the summit of an oozy rock, etc. etc._
To descend from the _pinnacle of Parnassus_ to the _plain of common
sense_,--the fellow being deeply, though not dangerously, wounded
in the forehead, extreme agony excited a most hideous grin. His
_woe-begone_ figure, opposed to the pert triumphant air of his tiny
conqueror, and the half suppressed laugh of his surrounding friends,
presented a scene too ridiculous to be resisted. The young tyro
seized his pencil, drew his first group of portraits from the life,
and gave, with a strong resemblance of each, such a grotesque variety
of character as evades all description.
When we consider this little sketch was his _coup d'essai_, the loss
of it is much to be regretted.
He probably made many others during his apprenticeship. When that
expired, bidding adieu to _red lions_ and _green dragons_, he
endeavoured to attain such knowledge of drawing as would enable
him to delineate the human figure, and transfer his _burin_ from
silver to copperplate. In this attempt he had to encounter many
difficulties; engraving on copper was so different an art from
engraving on silver, that it was necessary he should _un_learn much
which he had already learned; and at twenty years of age, habits are
too deeply rooted to be easily eradicated; so that he never attained
the power of describing that clear, beautiful stroke which was then
given by some foreign artists, and has since been brought, I believe,
to its utmost perfection by Sir Robert Strange.
In his first efforts he had little more assistance than could
be acquired by casual communications, or imitating the works of
others;[4] those of Callot were probably his first models; and
shop-bills and book-plates his first performances. Some of these,
with impressions from tankards and tea-tables which escaped the
crucible, have, by the laudable industry of collectors, been
preserved to the present day. How far they add to the artist's fame,
or are really of the value at which they are sometimes purchased, is
a question of too high import for me to decide. By the connoisseur
it is asserted, that the earliest productions of a great painter
ought to be preserved, for they soar superior to the mature labours
of plodding dulness, and though but seeds of that genius intended by
nature to tower above its contemporaries, invariably exhibit _clear
marks of mind_; as every variety in the branches of a strong-ribbed
oak is, by the aid of a microscope, discoverable in the acorn.
By the opposite party it is urged, that collecting these _blotted
leaves of fancy_, is burying a man of talents in the ruins of his
_baby-house_; and that for the honour of his name, and _repose of his
soul_, they ought to be consigned to the flames, rather than pasted
in the _portfolio_.
I must candidly acknowledge, that for trifles by the hand of Hogarth
or Mortimer, I have a kind of religious veneration; but, like the
rebuses and riddles of Swift, they are still trifles, and except
when considered as tracing the progress of the mind from infancy
to manhood, are not entitled to much attention. If examined with
this regard, especial care should be taken that their names are not
dishonoured by the unmeaning and contemptible productions of inferior
artists, some of whose prints have found a place in the catalogue of
Hogarth's works. Mr. Nichols properly questions the plate of _Æneas
in a Storm_: he might safely put the same query to _Riche's Triumphal
Entry into Covent Garden_, and a few other plates, which some of the
collectors have _very positively_ asserted to be his. The _Jack in
Office_ and _Pug the Painter_, I believe, belong to other collectors.
That _the design for General Wolfe's monument_ should ever be
supposed the work of Hogarth, has often astonished me. I do not see
the most distant resemblance of his manner, in mind, conception,
design, or execution.
Many stories, similar to those which are told of the manner that
other painters revenged an insult, or supplied the exigencies of the
moment, are related of young Hogarth. If true, these volumes would
gain little interest by their insertion, for few of them are worthy
of a memorial; and if false, they ought not to be admitted.
That a young artist, just emancipated from the obscurity of a
silversmith's garret, should be unknown, we naturally suppose;
that talents, however exalted, should not be noticed by the public
until the professor gave some proofs of superiority, may be readily
credited.
That a youth of volatile dispositions, who had neither inheritance
nor protection, must frequently want money, follows as certainly as
night to day; and we place full confidence in the assertion, when
told that he has frequently said, "I remember the time when I have
gone moping into the city with scarce a shilling in my pocket; but
having received ten guineas there for a plate, returned home, put on
my sword and bag, and sallied out again, with all the confidence of a
man who had ten thousand pounds in his pocket."
I can believe that the elder Mr. Bowles was his first patron; but
when Mr. Nichols informs us, on the authority of Doctor Ducarrel,
that this _patron_ offered the young engraver half-a-crown a pound
for a plate just finished, rejoice that the inauspicious period when
such talents had such patronage[5] is past.
Mr. Horace Walpole well observes, that the history of an artist must
be sought in his works. The earliest date I have seen on any of
Hogarth's engravings is his own shop-bill, bordered with two figures
and two Cupids, and inscribed April 20, 1720. From this and similar
mechanic blazonry, he ascended to prints for books, in the execution
of which it was not necessary to have much knowledge of the arts. If
they were _copperplates_, the public were satisfied; neither spirit
of design, accuracy of drawing, nor delicacy of stroke were demanded.
Six engravings, containing six compartments each, for King's _History
of the Heathen Gods_, I should apprehend were among the earliest. I
have heard them doubted, and they are not mentioned in either Mr.
Walpole's or Mr. Nichols' list; but I believe them to be as certainly
Hogarth's as the Rake's Progress.
In two emblematical prints on the lottery, and the South Sea Bubble,
published in 1721, there is not much merit; and in the fifteen for
Aubrey de la Mottraye's Travels, dated 1723, we only regret that so
much time and copper should be wasted.
The _Burlington Gate_, which appeared in 1724, is in a very superior
style, and in the spirit of Callot. With some very well pointed
satire on the general passion for masquerades, and other ridiculous
_raree-shows_, it unites a burlesque of Kent the architect, who
upon the pediment of his patron's gate is exalted above Raphael and
Michael Angelo. From this circumstance I think it probable that
the print was engraved as a sort of admission ticket to Sir James
Thornhill's academy, which was opened that year. The knight would
unquestionably be gratified by this ridicule of his rival, and might
in consequence admit the young artist to such a degree of intimacy
as enabled him to gain the heart and hand of Miss Thornhill. The
burlesque copy of Kent's altar-piece at St. Clement's Church was
published in 1725; and fifteen headpieces for Bever's Military
Punishments in the same year.[6]
By seventeen small plates, with a head of the author for Butler's
_Hudibras_, printed in 1726, he first became known in his profession.
In design, these are almost direct copies from a series inserted in
a small edition of the same book, published sixteen years before.
Whether this originated in a wish to save himself the trouble of
making original designs, or in the twenty booksellers for whom this
edition was published, is not easy to determine. These _midwives
to the Muses_ might think he was upon safer ground while copying
the designs of an artist sanctioned by public approbation, than
in following _his own inventions_, and in this opinion our young
engraver might possibly join. Taking these circumstances into the
account, I do not agree with Mr. Walpole, when he observes that _we
are surprised to find so little humour in an undertaking so congenial
to his talents_. If these prints are considered as copies, they ought
not to be produced as a criterion; if compared with those from which
they are taken, it is not easy to conceive a greater superiority than
he has attained over his originals. Neatness was not required; and
for such subjects I prefer the spirited etchings of a Hogarth to the
most delicate finishing of a Bartolozzi.
Copies of them are inserted in Grey's Hudibras, published 1744, and
Townley's French translation, printed _à Londres_, 1757. In Grey's
edition, the head of Butler is not copied from Hogarth, who certainly
had for his pattern White's mezzotint of John Baptist Monoyer the
flower painter, from Sir Godfrey Kneller: to any portrait that I have
ever seen of Samuel Butler, it has not the faintest resemblance; and
how the artist came to give it that name, it is difficult to guess.[7]
The large series on that subject were published the same year, and
are thus entitled: _Twelve excellent and most diverting prints
taken from the celebrated poem of Hudibras, written by Mr. Samuel
Butler, exposing the villany and hypocrisy of the times, invented
and engraved on twelve copperplates, by William Hogarth, and are
humbly dedicated to William Ward, Esq. of Great Houghton, in
Northamptonshire, and Mr. Allan Ramsay of Edinburgh._[8]
"What excellence can brass or marble claim!
These papers better do secure thy fame:
Thy verse all monuments does far surpass;
No mausoleum's like thy Hudibras."
Allan Ramsay subscribed for thirty sets. The number of subscribers in
all, amounts to 192.
The late Mr. Walker of Queen Anne Street had a sketch of Hudibras and
Ralpho, painted by Isaac Fuller, very much in the manner of Hogarth,
who I think must have seen, and, in the early part of his life,
studied Fuller's pictures.
Seven of the drawings were in the possession of the late Mr. Samuel
Ireland, three are in Holland, and two are said to have been in the
collection of a person in one of the northern provinces about twenty
years ago, but are now probably destroyed. Thus are the works of
genius scattered like the _Sibyl's leaves_.
Hogarth seems to have been particularly partial to this subject; for,
previous to engraving the twelve large plates, he painted it in oil.
The twelve original pictures, somewhat larger than the prints, are in
the possession of the editor of these volumes.
The variety with which the characteristic distinctions of the figures
are marked, the firm and spirited touch with which each of the
characters are pencilled, is peculiar to this artist: they come into
that class of pictures, which to those who have not seen them cannot
be described; to those who have, a description is unnecessary.
In a masquerade ticket, published 1727, he has a second time
introduced John James Heidegger, of ill-favoured memory.
Notwithstanding Lord Chesterfield's wager, that this _Surintendant
des plaisirs d'Angleterre_ did not produce a man with so hideous a
countenance as his own, and Pope having honoured him with a place in
his Dunciad, when describing
"A monster of a fowl,
Something between a _Heidegger_ and owl,"
and his ugliness being in a degree proverbial, an engraving of his
face from a mask, taken after his death, and inserted in Lavater's
Physiognomy, has strong marks of a benevolent character, and features
by no means displeasing or disagreeable.
The print of our _decollating_ Harry and Anna Boleyne, is engraved
from a painting once in Vauxhall Gardens.[9] Whatever might be the
picture, the print is in every point of view contemptible. His
frontispieces to Apuleius and Cassandra, Perseus and Andromeda, John
Gulliver, and the Highland Fair, come in precisely the same class.
Those to _Terræ Filius_, the Humours of Oxford, and Tom Thumb, have
some traces of comedy.
Various temporary satires on the local follies and vices of the day,
which he engraved about this time, are enumerated by Mr. Walpole and
Mr. Nichols, but have not in general much merit. The compliments he
paid to Sir James Thornhill, by ridiculing William Kent, have been
noticed in the preceding pages; but Hogarth's partiality was not
confined to the knight, he extended it to the knight's daughter,
and finding _favour in her sight_,--without the formal ceremony of
asking consent, or the tedious process of a settlement,--_took her
to wife_. This union being neither sanctioned by her father,[10]
nor accompanied with a fortune, compelled him to redouble his
professional exertions.
His first large print was Southwark Fair, a natural and highly
ludicrous representation of the plebeian amusements of that period;
but by the Harlot's Progress, he in 1734 established his character
as a painter of domestic history. When his wife's father saw the
designs, their originality of idea, regularity of narration, and
fidelity of scenery, convinced him that such talents would force
themselves into notice, and when known, must be distinguished and
patronized. Among a great number of copies which the success of these
prints tempted obscure artists to make, there was one set printed on
two large sheets of paper, for G. King, Brownlow Street, which, being
made with the author's consent, may possibly contain some additions
suggested and inserted by Hogarth's directions. In Plate I., beneath
the sign of the Bell, PARSONS INTIER BUTT BEAR. In Plate II., to the
picture of Jonah under a gourd, a label, _Jonah, why art thou angry?_
and under one of the portraits is written, Mr. Woolston. Below each
scene, an inscription describes, in true _beaux' spelling_; the
meaning of the prints, and points out two of the characters to be
Colonel Charteris and Sir John Gonson. To the strong resemblance the
latter of these delineations bore to the original, Mr. Hogarth is
said to be indebted for much of his popularity. The magistrate being
universally known, a striking portrait _in little_ would then, as
now, have a more numerous band of admirers than the best conceived
moral satire.
In 1735, when he published his Rake's Progress with a view of
_stranding the pirates of the arts_, he solicited and obtained
an Act to vest an exclusive right in designers and engravers, and
restrain the multiplying copies of their works without their consent.
Like many other _Acts of Parliament_, it was inaccurately worded, and
very inadequate to the evil it professed to cure; for Lord Hardwicke
determined that no assignee, claiming under an assignment from the
original inventor, could receive advantage from it: though after
Hogarth's death, the Legislature, by Stat. 7th, Geo. III., granted
to his widow a further term of twenty years in the property of her
husband's works.
In 1736, at the particular desire of a nobleman, whose name deserves
no commemoration, he engraved two prints, entitled _Before_ and
_After_. There are few examples of this artist making designs from
the thoughts of others. The Sleeping Congregation, Distressed Poet,
Enraged Musician, Strolling Actresses, Modern Midnight Conversation,
and many genuine comedies of a new description, where the humour of
five acts is brought into one scene, were the productions of his own
mind. From these and other mirrors of the times, he was considered
as an original author; and being now in the plenitude of his
fame,--conceiving himself established in reputation, and conscious of
being first in his peculiar walk,--he, on the 25th of Jan. 1744-5,
printed proposals, offering the paintings of his Harlot's and Rake's
Progress, Four Times of the Day, and Strolling Actresses, to public
sale, by an auction of a most singular nature.
"I. Every bidder shall have an entire leaf numbered in the book of
sale, on the top of which will be entered his name and place of
abode, the sum paid by him, the time when, and for which picture.
"II. That on the last day of sale, a clock (striking every five
minutes) shall be placed in the room; and when it hath struck five
minutes after twelve, the first picture mentioned in the sale book
will be deemed as sold; the second picture, when the clock hath
struck the next five minutes after twelve; and so on successively
till the whole nineteen pictures are sold.
"III. That none advance less than gold at each bidding.
"IV. No person to bid on the last day, except those whose names were
before entered in the book. As Mr. Hogarth's room is but small, he
begs the favour that no person, except those whose names are entered
in the book, will come to view his paintings on the last day of sale."
A method so novel possibly disgusted the town: they might not exactly
understand this tedious formulæ of entering their names and places of
abode in a book open to indiscriminate inspection; they might wish
to humble an artist, who, by his proposals, seemed to consider that
he did the world a favour in suffering them to bid for his works; or
the _rage_ for paintings might be confined to the admirers of _old
masters_. Be that as it may, for his nineteen pictures he received
only four hundred and twenty-seven pounds seven shillings,--a price
by no means equal to their merit.[11]
The _prints_ of the Harlot's Progress had sold much better than
those of the Rake's; yet the _paintings_ of the former produced
only fourteen guineas each, while those of the latter were
sold for twenty-two! That admirable picture, _Morning_, twenty
guineas,--_Night_, in every point inferior to almost any of his
works, six-and-twenty!
As a ticket of admission to this sale, he engraved the annexed plate.
_THE BATTLE OF THE PICTURES._
"In curious paintings I'm exceeding nice,
And know their several beauties by their price;
Auctions and sales I constantly attend,
But choose my pictures by a skilful friend.
Originals and copies, much the same;
The picture's value is the painter's name."
[Illustration: BATTLE OF PICTURES.]
In one corner of this very ludicrous print he has represented an
auction-room, on the top of which is a weathercock, in allusion
perhaps to Cock the auctioneer. Instead of the four initials for
North, East, West, and South, we have P, U, F, S, which, with
a little allowance for bad spelling, must pass for _Puffs_! At
the door stands a porter, who from the length of his staff may be
high-constable of the old school, and gentleman-usher to the modern
connoisseurs. As an attractive show-board, we have an high-finished
Flemish head, in one of those ponderous carved and gilt frames, that
give the _miniatures_ inserted in them the appearance of a glow-worm
in a gravel pit. A catalogue and a carpet (properly enough called
the _flags of distress_) are _now_ the signs of a sale; but _here_,
at the end of a long pole, we have an unfurled standard, emblazoned
with that _oracular talisman_ of an auction-room, the _fate-deciding
hammer_. Beneath is a picture of St. Andrew on the cross, with an
immense number of _fac-similes_, each inscribed _ditto_. _Apollo_,
who is flaying _Marsyas_, has no mark of a deity, except the rays
which beam from his head; he is placed under a projecting branch,
and we may truly say the tree shadows what it ought to support. The
coolness of poor Marsyas is perfectly philosophical; he endures
torture with the apathy of a Stoic. The third tier is made up by a
herd of Jupiters and Europas, of which _interesting_ subject, as
well as the foregoing, there are _dittos_, _ad infinitum_. These
invaluable _tableaux_ being unquestionably painted by the great
Italian masters, is a proof of their unremitting industry;--their
labours evade calculation; for had they acquired the _polygraphic_
art of striking off pictures with the facility that printers roll
off copperplates, and each of them attained the age of Methusaleth,
they could not have painted _all_ that are exhibited under their
names. Nothing is therefore left us to suppose, but that _some of
these undoubted originals_ were painted by their disciples.[12]
Such are the _collections_ of _fac-similes_; the other pictures are
drawn up in battle array; we will begin with that of _St. Francis_,
the corner of which is in a most unpropitious way driven through
Hogarth's _Morning_. The third painting of the Harlot's Progress
suffers equal degradation from a weeping Madonna, while the splendid
saloon of the repentant pair in Marriage à la Mode is broken by the
Aldobrandini Marriage. Thus far is rather in favour of the ancients;
but the aerial combat has a different termination: for, by the
riotous scene in the Rake's Progress, a hole is made in Titian's
Feast of Olympus; and a Bacchanalian, by Rubens, shares the same fate
from the Modern Midnight Conversation. Considered as so much reduced,
the figures are etched with great spirit, and have strong character.
In ridicule of the preference given to old pictures, he exercised not
only his pencil, but his pen. His advertisement for the sale of the
paintings of Marriage à la Mode, inserted in a Daily Advertiser of
1750, thus concludes:
"As, according to the standard so righteously and laudably
established by picture-dealers, picture-cleaners, picture-frame
makers (and other connoisseurs), the works of a painter are to be
esteemed more or less valuable as they are more or less scarce, and
as the living painter is most of all affected by the inferences
resulting from this and other considerations equally candid and
edifying, Mr. Hogarth by way of precaution, not puff, begs leave to
urge that probably this will be the last sale of pictures he may
ever exhibit, because of the difficulty of vending such a number
at once to any tolerable advantage; and that the whole number he
has already exhibited of the historical or humorous kind does not
exceed fifty, of which the three sets called the Harlot's Progress,
the Rake's Progress, and that now to be sold, make twenty: so that
whoever has a taste of his own to rely on, and is not too squeamish,
and has courage enough to own it, by daring to give them a place in
a collection till Time (the supposed finisher, but real destroyer of
paintings) has rendered them fit for those more sacred repositories
where schools, names, heads, masters, etc., attain their last stage
of preferment, may from hence be convinced that multiplicity, at
least, of his, Mr. Hogarth's pieces, will be no diminution of their
value."[14]
In the same year with the Battle of the Pictures he etched the
subscription-ticket for Garrick in Richard III.; where, in a festoon
with a mask, a roll of paper, a palette, and a laurel, he combines
the drama and the arts.
Soon after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle he visited France. A people
so different from any he had before seen, and manners so inimical to
his own, greatly disgusted him. Ignorance of the language, added
to some unpleasant circumstances that had their rise in his own
imprudence, form a slight apology for these prejudices; he _told them
to the world_ in a view of the Gates of Calais, under which article
I have inserted a cantata written by his friend Forest. The portrait
in a cap, with a palette, on which is the waving _line of beauty and
grace_, he this year engraved from his own painting. Beneath the
frame are three books, labelled, Shakspeare, Milton, Swift; and on
one side his faithful and favourite dog Trump. As Hogarth afterwards
erased _the human face divine_, and inserted the _divine_ Churchill
in the character of a bear, the print is become very scarce; a small
copy adorns the title-page to this volume. Some despicable rhymes on
the dog and painter were published in the Scandalizade. Thus do the
lines conclude:
"The very self same,--how boldly they strike!
And I can't forbear thinking they're somewhat alike.
Oh fie! to a dog would you Hogarth compare?
Not so,--I say only, they're like as it were;
A respectable pair, all spectators allow,
And that they deserve a description below,
In capital letters, BEHOLD WE ARE TWO."
Those who are personally acquainted with Hogarth deem this print a
strong likeness: the picture is remarkably well painted, better than
any I have seen from his pencil, except the head of Captain Coram,
now in the _Foundling Hospital_. To that charity Hogarth and several
contemporary painters presented some of their performances. The
attention they obtained from the public induced the members of an
academy in St. Martin's Lane to attempt an extension of the plan.
With this view, a letter was printed, and sent to the different
artists. As it was the cornerstone of that stupendous structure, now
become a Royal Academy, I have inserted a copy, with which I was
favoured by the gentleman to whom it is addressed.
"TO MR. PAUL SANDBY.
"_Academy of Painting, Sculpture, etc.,
St. Martin's Lane, Tuesday, October the 23d, 1753._
"SIR,--There is a scheme set on foot for erecting a public
academy for the improvement of the arts of painting, sculpture,
and architecture; and as it is thought necessary to have a
certain number of professors, with proper authority, in order
to the making regulations, taking in subscriptions, erecting
a building, instructing the students, and concerning all such
measures as shall be afterwards thought necessary, your company
is desired at the Turk's Head, in Greek Street, Soho, on Tuesday
the 13th of November, at five o'clock in the evening precisely,
to proceed to the election of thirteen painters, three sculptors,
one chaser, two engravers, and two architects; in all twenty-one,
for the purposes aforesaid.--I am, Sir, your most humble servant,
"FRANCIS MILNER NEWTON, _Sec._
"_P.S._--Please to bring the enclosed list, marked with a cross
before the names of thirteen painters, three sculptors, one
chaser, two engravers, and two architects, as shall appear to you
the most able artists in their several professions, and in all
other respects the most proper for conducting this design. If
you cannot attend, it is expected that you will send your list,
sealed and enclosed in a cover, directed to me, and write your
name in the cover, without which no regard will be paid to it.
"The list in that case will be immediately taken out of the
cover, and mixed with the other lists, so that it shall not be
known from whom it came; all imaginable methods being concerted
for carrying on this election without favour or partiality.
If you know any artist of sufficient merit to be elected a
professor, who has been overlooked in drawing out the list,
be pleased to write his name, according to his place in the
alphabet, with a cross before it."
Their measures did not meet the approbation of Mr. Hogarth. He
thought that the establishment of an academy would attract a crowd
of young men to neglect studies better suited to their powers, and
depart from more profitable pursuits: that every boy who could chalk
a straight-lined figure upon a wall, would be led, by his mamma
discovering that it was _prodigious natural!_ to mistake inclination
for ability, and suppose himself born for _shining in the fine
arts_!--that the streets would be crowded by lads with palettes and
portfolios, print-shops be as numerous as porter-houses, and finally,
that which ought to be considered as a science, become a trade; and
what was still worse, a trade which would not support its professors.
In near fifty years, that have _sunk like a sunbeam in the sea_,
the arts have assumed a new face; they at this period form a very
profitable branch of our commerce, and his prophecy pertaining unto
print-shops is partly fulfilled.
It has been before observed that Mr. Hogarth, in his own portrait,
engraved as a frontispiece to his works, drew a serpentine line on a
painter's palette, and denominated it--_The line of beauty_.
In the preface to his Analysis, he thus describes the consequence of
this denomination:--
"The bait soon took, and no Egyptian hieroglyphic ever amused more
than it did for a time; painters and sculptors came to me to know the
meaning of it, being as much puzzled with it as other people, till it
came to have some explanation. Then indeed, but not till then, some
found it out to be an old acquaintance of theirs; though the account
they gave of its properties was very near as satisfactory as that
which a day-labourer, who occasionally uses the lever, could give of
that machine as a mechanical power.
"Others, as common face-painters, and copiers of pictures, denied
that there could be such a rule either in art or nature, and
asserted it was all stuff and madness; but no wonder that these
gentlemen should not be ready in comprehending a thing they have
little or no business with. For though the picture-copier may
sometimes, to a common eye, seem to vie with the original he copies,
the artist himself requires no more ability, genius, or knowledge
of nature, than a _journeyman weaver_ at the _Gobelins_, who in
working after a piece of painting, bit by bit, scarcely knows what
he is about; whether he is weaving a man or a horse; yet at last,
almost insensibly, turns out of his loom a fine piece of tapestry,
representing, it may be, one of Alexander's battles painted by Le
Brun.
"As the above-mentioned print thus involved me in frequent disputes,
by explaining the qualities of the line, I was extremely glad to
find it (which I had conceived as only part of a system in my own
mind) so well supported by a precept of Michael Angelo, which was
first pointed out to me by Dr. Kennedy, a learned antiquarian and
connoisseur, of whom I afterwards purchased the translation, from
which I have taken several passages to my purpose."[15]
To explain this system, he in 1753 commenced author, and published
his Analysis, the professed purpose of which was to fix the
fluctuating ideas of _taste_, by establishing a standard of beauty.
This he expected would be considered by his contemporaries, as the
ancients considered the little soldier modelled by Policletus, the
grammar of proportion, criterion of elegance, and rule of perfection.
It must be acknowledged that this was expecting somewhat more than
his system deserved; but he received much less. Sheets of good
copper were defaced to prove, in the first place, that _there was
no such line_, and in the next, that _he had stolen it from the
ancients_. Some called it the line of deformity, and others the line
of drunkenness. By a lady he was more flattered: she told him it was
precisely the line which the sun makes in his annual motion round
the ecliptic.
His book is divided into chapters, treating of _fitness_, _variety_,
_symmetry_, _simplicity_, _intricacy_, _quantity_, _lines_, _forms_,
_composition with the waving line_, _proportion_, _light and
shade_, _colouring_, _attitude_, _and action_. The hypothesis which
he endeavours to establish is illustrated by near three hundred
explanatory figures, with references to each.
_ANALYSIS OF BEAUTY._