William Hogarth
Satirical social critic and printmaker
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects", and he is perhaps best known for his series A Harlot’s Progress, A Rake’s Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode. Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian". Hogarth was born in London to a lower-middle-class family. In his youth he took up an apprenticeship with an engraver, but did not complete the apprenticeship. His father underwent periods of mixed fortune, and was at one time imprisoned in lieu of outstanding debts, an event that is thought to have informed William’s paintings and prints with a hard edge. Influenced by French and Italian painting and engraving, Hogarth’s works are mostly satirical caricatures, sometimes bawdily sexual, mostly of the first rank of realistic portraiture. They became widely popular and mass-produced via prints in his lifetime, and he was by far the most significant English artist of his generation.
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Artworks by this artist (119 total)
- Gin Street 1750
- Beer Street 1751
- The Adventure of Mambrino’s Helmet 1756
- Hudibras Encounters the Skimmington no.12
- The Distressed Poet 1733-1735
- William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, Later 4th Duke of Devonshire 1741
- Mr. Garrick in the Character of Richard III 1746
- Scholars at a Lecture (A Chorus of Singers) 1736
- Studies of Heads ca. 1733
- A Fishing Party c.1730-31
- Mary Hogarth ca. 1740
- John and Elizabeth Jeffreys and Their Children 1730
- Restoration Procession of Charles II at Cheapside ca. 1745
- Lewis Theobald; Detail of the Poet
- Operation Scene in a Hospital with Subsidiary Sketches in the Margin at the Lower Right
- Characters and Caricatures; subscription ticket for ‘Marriage à la Mode’ 1743
- Gulielmus Hogarth 1749
- The Five Orders of Periwigs 1761
- The Distressed Poet 1740
- William FitzHerbert early 1740s