It takes a split second these days to create an image, and how many millions are recorded daily on mobile phones, possibly never to be looked at again? You can see it all happening in the palatial surroundings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, definitely one of those tick-off destinations on many travellers' bucket lists, where those in search of instant pictorial satisfaction throng the imposing statue-lined staircase for a selfie or pout for a photo in the café under the spectacular cupola. But we're not in Vienna for a quick fix, we're at the KHM to admire something more enduring in the shape of art produced almost 500 years ago by Rembrandt and his pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten that was intended to mislead your eyes into seeing the real in the unreal. Artistic deception is the story at the centre of Rembrandt--Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion , one of the most engrossing and best-staged exhibitions we've seen this year. And, somewhat surprisingly, a show wi...
We've all done it on a wet weekend, haven't we? Gorged ourselves on a box set, watching one episode after another after another, combining gluttony and indulgence, just two of the vices that the great storyteller of the Georgian age, William Hogarth, was able to illustrate so memorably, along with all their consequences.
Hogarth was the master of the 18th-century equivalent of the box set, the moral tale told in a series of paintings or engravings, and in London this autumn you get the chance to enjoy the art equivalent of that Netflix or iPlayer binge. Go along to Sir John Soane's Museum to see, for the first time ever, all of Hogarth's series of pictures together on show in one place. Debauchery, infidelity, addiction, insanity, political chicanery: Hogarth: Place and Progress has got the lot.
And, astonishingly at a time when exhibitions in London are getting more and more expensive, this opportunity to get this close up to the defining works of one of Britain's greatest ever painters -- and some of the most memorable images in the history of art in this island -- is completely free of charge.
So, if you know Hogarth, you're already sold on the concept. If not, let's just lay it out a little more clearly: Sir John Soane's Museum already owns two of Hogarth's great series: A Rake’s Progress and The Humours of an Election. These are joined for this show by Marriage A-la-Mode from the National Gallery and The Four Times of Day and the incomplete Happy Marriage series from various collections. And there are prints of three other series -- A Harlot's Progress, Industry and Idleness and The Four Stages of Cruelty -- as well as Gin Lane and Beer Street.
Time to hit the play button.
The exhibition starts with the series of eight paintings that make up A Rake’s Progress. To summarise the plot briefly, the spendthrift Tom Rakewell inherits his miserly father's fortune, abandons his pregnant girlfriend, Sarah, and aims to move on up in the world as a man of fashion.
In episode 3, Tom is to be found at a brothel in Covent Garden. On the right, he's already rather worse for wear and is having his pocket picked into the bargain. Meanwhile, the stripper's getting ready for her performance on the left.
You'll not be surprised to know that Rakewell finds his way into debtor's prison, and, eventually, the madhouse in the last of the series.
The delight with Hogarth is in the amount of detail he can pack in to his pictures. They're like sprawling novels filled with compelling and fascinating sub-plots, as we saw in the recent Foundling Museum show on Hogarth & the Art of Noise, which concentrated on just one painting, The March of the Guards to Finchley.
And you've got a fantastic opportunity at the Soane Museum to become really intimate with these pictures. They're hung at eye level, in small rooms. You can step right up to them and examine every detail.
Hung in the same room as the Rake's Progress are the prints of A Harlot's Progress, the first series Hogarth ever produced.
In this first plate, the innocent country girl Moll Hackabout arrives in London on a journey that will rapidly descend into prostitution, disease, and death.
A decade on, in the 1740s, Hogarth produced another blockbuster: Marriage A-la-Mode. It's the tale of the dissolute son of the Earl of Squanderfield and his mismatched bride, the daughter of a City merchant.
It's episode 2 of 6, and things are already going really badly. The unhappy couple have been making a night of it, but separately. The mantelpiece is covered in the sort of antique and exotic ostentatious ornaments Hogarth hated. The dog is sniffing out another woman's mob cap in the pocket of the young earl, who has a black spot on his neck covering up a sign of venereal disease. And the steward on the left is throwing up his hands in horror at the pair's accumulation of bills.
There's a fine cast of characters in Marriage A-la-Mode: the French quack doctor, M de la Pillule, and of course the lawyer Silvertongue, who becomes the countess's lover and is seen escaping in his nightshirt through a window after fatally wounding the earl in a swordfight when the couple are discovered in flagrante. The countess, ruined, dies in the last scene, of course. There's a price to pay for immorality in Hogarth's world.
Hung together with Marriage A-la-Mode are the remnants -- some oil sketches and engravings after lost studies -- of Hogarth's abandoned attempt to ditch satire and biting social commentary for feelgood romance -- The Happy Marriage. They seem to prove that vice is so much more interesting than virtue....
A prudish woman on her way to church encounters some of last night's revellers outside a coffee house.... order meets disorder. Honestly, it's made for TV.
And so to politics.... Hogarth, with his disdain for Italianate art and opera and his enthusiasm for roast beef, might well have been an enthusiastic Brexiteer, but he'd surely have found ample subject matter in the current failure to reach any sort of conclusion to the crisis over Britain's exit from the EU.
The Humours of an Election tell the story of a vote to elect a new MP in the town of Guzzledown. Voters accept bribes from both sides, and the sick and the mentally incapacitated are brought to cast their ballots.
In this final scene, one of the two victorious candidates is chaired through the town but is about to come unstuck amid a group of runaway pigs, a dancing bear and some collateral damage from the violent fight going on in the foreground. On top of the gatepost on the right, above the blind fiddler, two mischievous boys put a pair of spectacles on a skull, questioning the new MP's intentions. British democracy in action.
This late group of election paintings are among Hogarth's greatest. Filled with observation and incident and in a much lighter palette than his earlier pictures.
Hunger will be setting in by now, so it's fitting that we end the show in the basement kitchen. Industry and Idleness is the 12-part epic on display here, the narrative of two apprentices, the industrious Francis Goodchild and the aptly named Tom Idle, whose careers take radically different paths, as their names suggest they will. Goodchild marries his master's daughter and becomes an upstanding citizen, rising to Lord Mayor. Idle is eventually involved in a robbery that culminates in murder. Scene 10 sees Goodchild as a judge in court condemning Idle to death.
And so it is that Tom Idle is hanged at Tyburn. He's in the cart, with his coffin, reading a Bible. And there's a big crowd to see him executed. This is popular entertainment, Georgian-style.
Just time for a drink before you head back to the 21st century. Beer or gin? Beer for Hogarth, the healthy British beverage contrasted with the intoxicated horror of Gin Lane, scene of that most shocking of images, the helpless baby falling into the void unnoticed by the intoxicated mother.
It's the end of your tour of Hogarth's London, where squalor collides with huge wealth, where all sorts of vice are to be found all around you. What fodder for a great storyteller. What a superb exhibition, up close and personal with one of our finest artists. And, as you enjoy each episode, you can take comfort in knowing you won't have squandered your wealth -- it's free -- nor will you have idled away your time. Hogarth would surely approve.
William Hogarth, A Harlot's Progress, 1 (Detail), 1732, Andrew Edmunds, London
William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode, 2: The Tête à Tête, 1743-45. © The National Gallery, London
William Hogarth, The Four Times of Day: Morning, 1736-37. © National Trust Collections, Upton House (The Bearsted Collection)
William Hogarth, The Humours of an Election, 4: Chairing the Member, 1754- 55. © The Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum
William Hogarth, Industry and Idleness, 11: The Idle ‘Prentice Executed at Tyburn, 1747. © Andrew Edmunds, London
William Hogarth, Gin Lane, 1751. © Andrew Edmunds, London
Hogarth was the master of the 18th-century equivalent of the box set, the moral tale told in a series of paintings or engravings, and in London this autumn you get the chance to enjoy the art equivalent of that Netflix or iPlayer binge. Go along to Sir John Soane's Museum to see, for the first time ever, all of Hogarth's series of pictures together on show in one place. Debauchery, infidelity, addiction, insanity, political chicanery: Hogarth: Place and Progress has got the lot.
And, astonishingly at a time when exhibitions in London are getting more and more expensive, this opportunity to get this close up to the defining works of one of Britain's greatest ever painters -- and some of the most memorable images in the history of art in this island -- is completely free of charge.
So, if you know Hogarth, you're already sold on the concept. If not, let's just lay it out a little more clearly: Sir John Soane's Museum already owns two of Hogarth's great series: A Rake’s Progress and The Humours of an Election. These are joined for this show by Marriage A-la-Mode from the National Gallery and The Four Times of Day and the incomplete Happy Marriage series from various collections. And there are prints of three other series -- A Harlot's Progress, Industry and Idleness and The Four Stages of Cruelty -- as well as Gin Lane and Beer Street.
Time to hit the play button.
The exhibition starts with the series of eight paintings that make up A Rake’s Progress. To summarise the plot briefly, the spendthrift Tom Rakewell inherits his miserly father's fortune, abandons his pregnant girlfriend, Sarah, and aims to move on up in the world as a man of fashion.
You'll not be surprised to know that Rakewell finds his way into debtor's prison, and, eventually, the madhouse in the last of the series.
The delight with Hogarth is in the amount of detail he can pack in to his pictures. They're like sprawling novels filled with compelling and fascinating sub-plots, as we saw in the recent Foundling Museum show on Hogarth & the Art of Noise, which concentrated on just one painting, The March of the Guards to Finchley.
And you've got a fantastic opportunity at the Soane Museum to become really intimate with these pictures. They're hung at eye level, in small rooms. You can step right up to them and examine every detail.
Hung in the same room as the Rake's Progress are the prints of A Harlot's Progress, the first series Hogarth ever produced.
A decade on, in the 1740s, Hogarth produced another blockbuster: Marriage A-la-Mode. It's the tale of the dissolute son of the Earl of Squanderfield and his mismatched bride, the daughter of a City merchant.
There's a fine cast of characters in Marriage A-la-Mode: the French quack doctor, M de la Pillule, and of course the lawyer Silvertongue, who becomes the countess's lover and is seen escaping in his nightshirt through a window after fatally wounding the earl in a swordfight when the couple are discovered in flagrante. The countess, ruined, dies in the last scene, of course. There's a price to pay for immorality in Hogarth's world.
Hung together with Marriage A-la-Mode are the remnants -- some oil sketches and engravings after lost studies -- of Hogarth's abandoned attempt to ditch satire and biting social commentary for feelgood romance -- The Happy Marriage. They seem to prove that vice is so much more interesting than virtue....
Following the exhibition round, we get to view Hogarth's attempt to take in all of London's sprawling life in The Four Times of Day. There's lust in Soho, cuckoldry at Sadler's Wells and a coach crash at Charing Cross, but before all that, dawn breaks in Covent Garden:
And so to politics.... Hogarth, with his disdain for Italianate art and opera and his enthusiasm for roast beef, might well have been an enthusiastic Brexiteer, but he'd surely have found ample subject matter in the current failure to reach any sort of conclusion to the crisis over Britain's exit from the EU.
The Humours of an Election tell the story of a vote to elect a new MP in the town of Guzzledown. Voters accept bribes from both sides, and the sick and the mentally incapacitated are brought to cast their ballots.
This late group of election paintings are among Hogarth's greatest. Filled with observation and incident and in a much lighter palette than his earlier pictures.
Hunger will be setting in by now, so it's fitting that we end the show in the basement kitchen. Industry and Idleness is the 12-part epic on display here, the narrative of two apprentices, the industrious Francis Goodchild and the aptly named Tom Idle, whose careers take radically different paths, as their names suggest they will. Goodchild marries his master's daughter and becomes an upstanding citizen, rising to Lord Mayor. Idle is eventually involved in a robbery that culminates in murder. Scene 10 sees Goodchild as a judge in court condemning Idle to death.
Just time for a drink before you head back to the 21st century. Beer or gin? Beer for Hogarth, the healthy British beverage contrasted with the intoxicated horror of Gin Lane, scene of that most shocking of images, the helpless baby falling into the void unnoticed by the intoxicated mother.
Practicalities
Hogarth: Place and Progress is on at Sir John Soane's Museum in central London until January 5. The museum is open from 1000 to 1700, Wednesday to Sunday, and although entry is free, the exhibition space is quite cramped, so admission is restricted and you will need to book a timeslot in advance here. The museum is on the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and Holborn on the Central and Piccadilly lines is the nearest Tube station, just a few minutes' walk away.Images
William Hogarth, A Rake’s Progress, 3: The Orgy, 1734. © The Trustees of Sir John Soane’s MuseumWilliam Hogarth, A Harlot's Progress, 1 (Detail), 1732, Andrew Edmunds, London
William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode, 2: The Tête à Tête, 1743-45. © The National Gallery, London
William Hogarth, The Four Times of Day: Morning, 1736-37. © National Trust Collections, Upton House (The Bearsted Collection)
William Hogarth, The Humours of an Election, 4: Chairing the Member, 1754- 55. © The Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum
William Hogarth, Industry and Idleness, 11: The Idle ‘Prentice Executed at Tyburn, 1747. © Andrew Edmunds, London
William Hogarth, Gin Lane, 1751. © Andrew Edmunds, London
I just read all your entries on Hogarth and would love to send you copies of my books. You list a few details I missed but will put into future reprints. email me at brotherhogarth@gmail.com and I will send. Thanks so much.
ReplyDeleteJ