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... arth challenges the ideal view that the rich live virtuous lives, showing many of the people at their worst, having affairs, drunk, gambling, and other vices. In the first in the series of six, he shows an arranged marriage between a Count and Countess. In the second, the marriage has already begun to break down with the husband and wife disinterested in one another, while evidence of them having partied with different people the night before lies all around them. The clothes show men in long golden buttoned coats and wearing stockings, with women in long dresses that bulged outwards from the tiny waist, accurately reflecting what was the current taste. "Marriage-a-la-Mode also includes a brilliant survey of contemporary fashions, in which the dresses of the 1740 s are illustrated with careful realism down to the smallest scrap of gold lace. " (Quennell 1955: 177) The people's interests depicted reveal their personalities and their status in society, such as playing cards, a book of music and the artwork hidden underneath the curtain in the other room. "[Hogarth] epitomizes both the social origin and personal character of each of the newly-weds. " (Lindsay 1977: 123) The third in the series, Scene with the Quack, shows the Count at a doctor to receive medicine for a sexually transmitted disease he contracted. In the next, he discovers his wife with another man in the bedroom and is fatally wounded in a fight with him.
Then his wife poisons herself in her grief, while in this last plate, her father takes her wedding ring off her finger as she lies dying, appearing to be thinking only of the value of the ring, not of his daughter's life. Hogarth thus gives a gloomy view of what he perceives to be the life of the upper classes. However, while he shows the wealthy classes in this light, he is equally tough on all other members of society. "If an oligarchy, haughty, ignorant, and dissolute, are treated with merited severity in the Marriage a la Mode, the... citizens, are treated with equal and impartial severity. Hogarth meted out justice to all classes alike. " (Sala 1970: 250) He shows this with his prints satirizing the 'lower' class.
Hogarth in some prints shows the results which will lead from a life of criminal behaviour. Four stages of cruelty is a series which Hogarth intended to show some of the terrible habits of criminals, to "reveal the brutalization of life in a world of hard materialistic values. " (Dabydeen 1987: 65). In the first picture there are scenes of torture of dogs, cats and other animals. In the second it shows one of the characters from the first painting, Tom Nero, has now become a coach driver, and his cruelty to his horse caused it to break its leg.
In the third painting Tom is shown as a murderer, with the woman he killed lying on the ground, while in the fourth, titled Reward of Cruelty, the murderer is shown being dissected by scientists after having being executed. Hogarth is thus using the series to say what will happen to people who carry on in this manner. This shows what crimes people were concerned with in this time, the method of execution, and the dissection reflects upon the 1752 Act of Parliament which had just being passed allowing for the dissection of executed criminals who had been convicted for murder. It shows his reaction against the cruel treatment of animals which he saw around him, that he wished could be stopped. For as he said in an advertisement that was written in 1751 the purpose of the prints was "to reform some reigning Vices peculiar to the lower class of people. " (latency. com) Similarly, in Industry and Idleness, Hogarth shows the progression in the lives of two apprentices, one who is dedicated and hard working, the other idle which leads to crime and his execution.
This shows the work ethic of Protestant England, where those who work hard get rewarded, such as the industrious apprentice who becomes Sherrif (plate 8), Alderman (plate 10) and finally the Lord Mayor of London in the last plate in the series. The idle apprentice, who begins with being "at play in the church yard" (plate 3), ends up "in a Garrett with a Common Prostitute" (plate 7) and "executed at Tyburn" (plate 11) The idle apprentice is sent to the gallows by the industrious apprentice himself. Hogarth's prints show rich people as two-faced, self-important, corrupt and decadent while depicting the poor as more occupied by food, alcohol and sex. He graphically portrays gambling, prostitution, murder, the torture of animals, infidelity, drug-taking and other criminal or objectionable activities.
While being critical of people's behaviour, he usually does so in a cheerful way, showing amusing looking characters even when he is disapproving of what they are doing. He is never bitter, always showing the lighter side of life. However, in all the series of paintings he produced, he shows a tragic ending, often which is very sad especially when contrasted to the first print in the series showing frequently a well meaning person being lead off course by society. There is still humour shown in the tragedy, it still ends on a comical note, and the series is more an enjoyable journey, than a depressing end. Hogarth's work is very much influenced by social life and culture, being based directly on the life of the times. His prints and paintings show a society which could be cruel to those who were not cautious, and vengeful against criminals.
Hogarth's aristocracy, with all the appearance of being pious and virtuous, turned out to have as many problems, and their lives as full of trouble, as the working classes. Bibliography Dabydeen, D. (1987) Hogarth, Walpole and Commercial Britain, Hans Publishing Ltd. , London Dabydeen, D. (1987) Images of Blacks in Eighteenth Century English Art, University of Georgia Press, Atlanta, Georgia Lindsay, J. (1977) Hogarth His Art and His World, Butler & Tanner Ltd, London Quennell, P. (1955) Hogarth's Progress, Collins, London Sala, G. (1970) William Hogarth Painter, Engraver & Philosopher, Redwood Press Ltd. , London Scull, C. (1991) The Some Hogarth's, Trefoil Publications, London Shesgreen, S. (1983) Hogarth and the Times-of-the-Day Tradition, Cornell University Press, London Ugly, J. (1997) Hogarth A Life and a world, Faber and Faber Ltd, London White, W. (1897) Hogarth's works complete, Edinburgh Riverside Press, Edinburgh Internet Research web Hogarth web art. asp? aid = 894 web web bio. htm web hogarth 5. html web web documents / file 003.
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