William Hogarth Paintings

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Biography of William Hogarth

English artist
Born 1697 - died 1764
Apprentice to: Sir James Thornhill (1675-1734).
Son-in-law of: Sir James Thornhill (1675-1734).

William Hogarth is unquestionably one of the greatest English artists and a man of remarkably individual character and thought. The painter is the great innovator in English art. On one hand, the artist was the first to paint themes from Shakespeare, Milton and the theater, and the founder of a wholly original genre of moral history, which was long known as Hogarthian. On the other, the painter investigated the aesthetic principles of William Hogarth art, which resulted in his book “The Analysis of Beauty”(1753).

In February 1713/14, he began his apprenticeship to a plate engraver, Ellis Gamble, who was a distant relation. By April 1720, the painter set up an independent business as an engraver. First William Hogarth painting included a number of commissions for small etched cards and bookplates, and in 1721 the realistic portraitist produced two inventive engraved allegories. With these topical prints The South Sea Scheme and The Lottery, which aroused considerable attention, William Hogarth started his black-and-white satires which made him so widely known in Britain and abroad. His first success as a painter was in the ‘conversational pieces’, in which figure informal groups of family and friends surrounded by customary things from their everyday life. He was not the inventor of the genre, and had many contemporary rivals, but William Hogarth images are marked with his own individuality: The Fishing Party (c.1730), The Wedding of Stephen Bechingham and Mary Cox (c.1730). In 1729, he married a daughter of teacher Sir James Thornhill.

The scene from The Beggar’s Opera, the William Hogarth art of an actual stage, brought him great success, and at about about 1730, the painter was commissioned for several versions. The result of this accomplishment was the idea of his own ‘theater’: the creation of ‘pictorial dramas’ and reaching wider public through the means of engraving.

In realistic portraiture, Hogarth displays a great variety and originality: George Arnold (c.1740), Mary Edwards (1742), Bishop Benjamin Hoadly (1743). The charm of childhood, the ability to compose a vivid group, a delightful delicacy of color appear in The Graham Children (1742). The portrait heads of his servants are penetrating studies of character: his Servants. (c.1750). The William Hogarth painting of Captain Thomas Coram (1740), the philanthropic sea captain who took a leading part in the foundation of the Foundling Hospital, adapts the formality of the ceremonial portrait to a democratic level. The painter’s character is reflected faithfully in his forthright Self-Portrait with Pug-Dog (1745).

His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects". Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian". The quality of William Hogarth as an artist is seen to advantage in his sketches and one sketch in particular, the famous The Shrimp Girl (c.1740-1743) quickly executed with a limited range of color, stands alone in his work, taking its place among the masterpieces of the world in its harmony of form and content, its freshness and vitality. William Hogarth painter died in 1764 in London and is buried in Chiswick cemetery.