English Masters Of The Eighteenth Century

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

Still more amazing as an example of Hogarth’s vivid characterisation and vivacity of expression is ‘The Shrimp Girl’. It is only a sketch, mostly in greys with a few touches of other colors, but there is no work in the National Gallery more abounding with life. These portraits, painted with joy for the painter’s satisfaction, never produced an income. He made his living by other pictures, and especially by his engravings, which had a wide sale and made his name a household word. The series of pictorial dramas which he invented brought him both fame and fortune, and after ‘The Rake’s Progress’ and other sets had firmly established Hogarth in popular favor, Sir James Thornhill became reconciled to his son-in-law, whom he now saw to be capable of earning a good living.

Narrative pictures were not a new thing in the history of art; the reliefs of Trajan’s Column at Rome tell the story of the Emperor’s Dacian campaigns, and we saw in the first chapter how Giotto and other early Italian painters recounted Bible stories and the lives of the saints in a series of pictures. But no painter before Hogarth had invented the story as well as illustrating it. Without any text familiar to the public, Hogarth by paint and engraving told new and original stories of his own time, and told them so clearly that they were universally understood. Sometimes these stores were almost wholly humorous, as in ‘The Election’ series, but more often they had a serious intention and amusing incidents were introduced only by way of light relief.

To regard Hogarth as a satirist first is wrong: he was more than that: he was a great moralist. For though no man more severely scourged the folly of his time, Hogarth taught his lessons not only by exposing the ridiculous, but also by revealing the tragedy of wrong and the beauty of goodness. Among his many inventions none more beautifully display his method than the ‘Marriage á la Mode’; and though each one of these pictures tells its own story clearly, it may be helpful to summarize the action of each scene, and add the illuminating comments made by the great critic Hazlitt:

Scene I. The Marriage Contract
In a splendid apartment the father of the bridegroom points to his pedigree, while the rich alderman, father of the bride, studies the marriage settlement. ‘The three figures of the young nobleman, his intended bride, and her inamorato, the lawyer, show how much Hogarth excelled in the power of giving soft and effeminate expression......Nothing,’ writes Hazlitt, ‘can be more finely managed than the differences of character in these delicate personages.’

Scene II. Shortly After Marriage
Note the delicious touch of satire in the four pictures of saints which adorn the walls of a wordily interior. An old steward, shocked at the way things are going, is leaving with a bundle of bills and one receipt. The wife sits yawning at breakfast, while the card tables and the candles, still burning, in the room seen beyond, show how the husband, lazing in his chair, had spent the night. ‘The figure, face, and attitude of the husband are inimitable,’ says Hazlitt. ‘Hogarth has with great skill contrasted the pale countenance of the husband with the yellow-whitish color of the marble mantelpiece behind him, in such a manner as to preserve the fleshy tone of the former. The airy splendor of the view of the room in this picture is probably not exceeded in any of the productions of the Flemish school.’

Scene III. The Visit To The Quack Doctor
The peer, with a cane in one hand and a box of pills in the other, rallies the sardonically smiling quack for having deceived him. ‘The young girl,’ says Hazlitt, ‘who is represented as the victim of fashionable profligacy, is unquestionably one of the artist’s chefs-ďœuvre.The exquisite delicacy of the painting is only surpassed by the felicity and subtlety of the conception. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the extreme softness of her person and the hardened indifference of her character.’

English Masters Of The Eighteenth Century (continued)