Hogarth was born in the parish of St. Bartholomew, London, the son of
a low tradesman, who bound him to a mean engraver of arms on plate;
but before his time was expired he felt the impulse of genius, and
felt it directed him to painting, tho little apprized at that time of
the mode nature had intended he should pursue. His apprenticeship was
no sooner expired than he entered into the academy in St. Martin's
Lane, and studied drawing from the life, in which he never attained to
great excellence. It was character, the passions, the soul, that his
genius was given him to copy. In coloring he proved no greater a
master; his force lay in expression, not in tints and chiaroscuro. At
first he worked for booksellers, and designed and engraved plates for
several books; and, which is extraordinary, no symptom of genius
dawned in those plates. His "Hudibras" was the first of his works that
marked him as a man above the common; yet what made him then noticed
now surprizes us, to find so little humor in an undertaking so
congenial to his talents. On the success, however, of those plates, he
commenced painter, a painter of portraits: the most ill-suited
employment imaginable to a man whose turn certainly was not flattery,
nor his talent adapted to look on vanity without a sneer. Yet his
facility in catching a likeness, and the methods he chose of painting
families and conversations in small, then a novelty, drew him
prodigious business for some time. It did not last: either from his
applying to the real bent of his disposition, or from his customers
apprehending that a satirist was too formidable a confessor for the
devotees of self-love. He had already dropt a few of his smaller
prints on some reigning follies; but as the dates are wanting on most
of them, I can not ascertain which, tho those on the South Sea and
"Rabbit Woman" prove that he had early discovered his talent for
ridicule, tho he did not then think of building his reputation or
fortune on its powers.
His "Midnight Modern Conversation" was the first work that showed his
command of character; but it was "The Harlot's Progress," published in
1729 or 1730, that established his fame. The pictures were scarce
finished, and no sooner exhibited to the public, and the subscription
opened, than above twelve hundred names were entered on his book. The
familiarity of the subject and the propriety of the execution made it
tasted by all ranks of people. Every engraver set himself to copy it,
and thousands of imitations were dispersed all over the kingdom. It
was made into a pantomime, and performed on the stage. The "Rake's
Progress," perhaps superior, had not so much success, from want of
novelty; nor, indeed, is the print of "The Arrest" equal in merit to
the others.
The curtain was now drawn aside, and his genius stood displayed in its
full luster. From time to time he continued to give those works that
should be immortal, if the nature of his art will allow it. Even the
receipts for his subscriptions had wit in them. Many of his plates he
engraved himself, and often expunged faces etched by his assistants
when they had not done justice to his ideas.
Not content with shining in a path untrodden before, he was ambitious
of distinguishing himself as a painter of history. But not only his
coloring and drawing rendered him unequal to the task; the genius that
had entered so feelingly into the calamities and crimes of familiar
life deserted him in a walk that called for dignity and grace. The
burlesque turn of his mind mixt itself with the most serious subjects.
In his "Danaë," the old nurse tries a coin of the golden shower with
her teeth to see if it is true gold; in the "Pool of Bethesda," a
servant of a rich ulcerated lady beats back a poor man that sought the
same celestial remedy. Both circumstances are justly thought, but
rather too ludicrous. It is a much more capital fault that "Danaë"
herself is a mere nymph of Drury. He seems to have conceived no higher
idea of beauty.
So little had he eyes to his own deficiencies, that he believed he had
discovered the principle of grace. With the enthusiasm of a
discoverer he cried, "Eureka!" This was his famous line of beauty,
the groundwork of his "Analysis," a book that has many sensible hints
and observations, but that did not carry the conviction nor meet the
universal acquiescence he expected. As he treated his contemporaries
with scorn, they triumphed over this publication, and imitated him to
expose him. Many wretched burlesque prints came out to ridicule his
system. There was a better answer to it in one of the two prints that
he gave to illustrate his hypothesis. In "The Ball," had he confined
himself to such outlines as compose awkwardness and deformity, he
would have proved half his assertion; but he has added two samples of
grace in a young lord and lady that are strikingly stiff and affected.
They are a Bath beau and a country beauty.
But this was the failing of a visionary. He fell afterward into a
grosser mistake. From a contempt of the ignorant virtuosi of the age,
and from indignation at the impudent tricks of picture-dealers, whom
he saw continually recommending and vending vile copies to bubble
collectors, and from having never studied, indeed having seen, few
good pictures of the great Italian masters, he persuaded himself that
the praises bestowed on those glorious works were nothing but the
effects of prejudice. He talked this language till he believed it; and
having heard it often asserted, as is true, that time gives a
mellowness to colors and improves them, he not only denied the
proposition, but maintained that pictures only grew black and worse by
age, not distinguishing between the degrees in which the proposition
might be true or false. He went further; he determined to rival the
ancients, and unfortunately chose one of the finest pictures in
England as the object of his compensation. This was the celebrated
"Sigismonda" of Sir Luke Schaub, now in the possession of the Duke of
Newcastle, said to be painted by Correggio, probably by Furino, but no
matter by whom. It is impossible to see the picture, or read Dryden's
inimitable tale, and not feel that the same soul animated both. After
many essays Hogarth at last produced his "Sigismonda," but no more
like "Sigismonda" than I to Hercules. Hogarth's performance was more
ridiculous than anything he had ever ridiculed. He set the price of
£400 on it, and had it returned on his hands by the person for whom it
was painted. He took subscriptions for a plate of it, but had the
sense at last to suppress it. I make no more apology for this account
than for the encomiums I have bestowed on him. Both are dictated by
truth, and are the history of a great man's excellences and errors.
Milton, it is said, preferred his "Paradise Regained" to his immortal
poem.
The last memorable event of our artist's life was his quarrel with Mr.
Wilkes; in which, if Mr. Hogarth did not commence direct hostilities
on the latter, he at least obliquely gave the first offense by an
attack on the friends and party of that gentleman. This conduct was
the more surprizing, as he had all his life avoided dipping his pencil
in political contests, and had early refused a very lucrative offer
that was made to engage him in a set of prints against the head of a
court party. Without entering into the merits of the cause, I shall
only state the fact. In September, 1762, Mr. Hogarth published his
print of _The Times_. It was answered by Mr. Wilkes in a severe _North
Briton_. On this the painter exhibited the caricature of the writer.
Mr. Churchill, the poet, then engaged in the war, and wrote his
epistle to Hogarth, not the brightest of his works, and in which the
severest strokes fell on a defect that the painter had neither caused
nor could amend--his age; and which, however, was neither remarkable
nor decrepit, much less had it impaired his talents, as appeared by
his having composed but six months before one of his most capital
works, the satire on the Methodists. In revenge for this epistle,
Hogarth caricatured Churchill under the form of a canonical bear, with
a club and a pot of porter--_Et vitulâ tu dignus et hic_. Never did
two angry men of their abilities throw mud with less dexterity.
Mr. Hogarth, in the year 1730, married the only daughter of Sir James
Thornhill, by whom he had no children. He died of a dropsy in his
breast at his house in Leicester Fields, October 26, 1764.