Who was the first original painter of England, was born in 1697. His
father, who had received a good education at St. Bees, kept a school in
Ship Court, and sought work from booksellers. But, like many another poor
scholar, he could not make a living, and died disappointed.
After spending some time at school, William Hogarth, warned by the
example of his father, determined to pursue a craft in preference to
literature, and was apprenticed, probably in 1711, to Ellis Gamble, a
silversmith in Cranbourne Alley. He tells us how he determined to enter
a wider field than that of mere silver-plate engraving, though at the
age of twenty to engrave his own designs on copper was the height of
his ambition. The men and women who jostled him in London streets or
rolled by him in their coaches, were his models. Beside the keenest
powers of observation, and a sardonic, sympathizing, and pitying humor,
he possessed a wonderfully accurate and retentive memory, which enabled
him to impress a face or form on his mind, and to reproduce it at
leisure. Occasionally, if some very attractive or singular face struck
his fancy, he would sketch it on his thumb nail, and thence transfer
it. Hogarth tells us that “instead of burdening the memory with musty
rules, or tiring the eye with copying dry or damaged pictures, I have
ever found studying from nature the shortest and safest way of obtaining
knowledge of my art.” In 1724 he engraved “Masquerades and Operas,” a
satire, which represents “society” crowding to a masquerade, and led
by a figure wearing a cap and bells on his head, and the garter on
his leg. This engraving delighted the public whom it satirized, and
Hogarth lost much through piracies of his work. He was employed by the
booksellers to illustrate books with engravings and frontispieces.
In 1726 was published, beside his twelve large prints, which are well
known, an edition of “Hudibras,” illustrated by Hogarth, in seventeen
smaller plates. The designs of Hogarth are not so witty as the verses
of Butler, but we must remember that the painter had never seen men
living and acting as they are described in the poem; they were not
like the men of whom he made his daily studies. At this period he who
dared to be original, and to satirize his neighbors, had much trouble.
In 1730 Hogarth made a secret marriage at old Paddington Church, with
Jane, only daughter of Sir James Thornhill, Serjeant-Painter to the
King. He had frequented Thornhill’s studio, but whether the art of the
court painter, or the face of his daughter was the greater attraction we
know not. There is no doubt that Hogarth’s technique was studied from
Thornhill’s pictures, and not from those of Watteau or Chardin, as has
been supposed. For a time after his marriage Hogarth confined himself to
painting portraits and conversation pieces, for which he was well paid,
although Walpole declares that this “was the most ill-suited employment
to a man whose turn was certainly not flattery.” Truthfulness, however,
is more valuable in a portrait than flattery, and we surely find it in
Hogarth’s portraits of himself, one in the National Gallery, and in that
of “Captain Coram,” at the Foundling.
One of the best of Hogarth’s life stories is the “Marriage à la Mode,”
the original paintings of which are in the National Gallery; they
appeared in prints in 1745. These well known pictures illustrate the
story of a loveless marriage, where parents sacrifice their children, the
one for rank, the other for money. Mr. Redgrave (“A Century of Painters”)
tells us that “the novelty of Hogarth’s work consisted in the painter
being the inventor of his own drama, as well as painter, and in the way
in which all the parts are made to tend to a dramatic whole, each picture
dependent on the other, and all the details illustrative of the complete
work. The same characters recur again and again, moved in different
tableaux with varied passions, one moral running through all, the
beginning finding its natural climax in the end.” We can not do more than
mention some of the remaining works by which the satirist continued “to
shoot Folly as she flies.” “Beer Street,” and “Gin Lane,” illustrate the
advantages of drinking the national beverage, and the miseries following
the use of gin. “The Cockpit” represents a scene very common in those
days, and contains many portraits. “The Election” is a series of four
scenes, published between 1755 and 1758, in which all the varied vices,
humors, and passions of a contested election are admirably represented.
Hogarth’s last years were embittered by quarrels, those with Churchill
and Wilkes being the most memorable. The publication in 1753 of his
admirable book, called “The Analysis of Beauty,” in which he tried to
prove that a winding line is the line of beauty, produced much adverse
criticism and many fierce attacks, which the painter could not take
quietly. He was further annoyed by the censures passed on his picture of
“Sigismunda,” now in the National Gallery, which he had painted in 1759
for Sir Richard Grosvenor, and which was returned on his hands. Two years
previously Hogarth had been made Serjeant-Painter to the King. He did
not live to hold his office long; on October 26th, 1764, the hand which
had exposed the vices and follies of the day so truly, and yet with such
humor, had ceased to move.