In celebration of William Hogarth's three hundredth birthday, the Hood Museum of Art presents "'Pictur'd Morals': Prints by William Hogarth," an exhibition that focuses on satirical depictions of eighteenth-century British society and its morals.
The prints taken almost entirely from the Hood's collection provide a thorough overview of Hogarth's cynical visual interpretations of English culture. This intimate selection of prints include 16 works on paper that represent Hogarth's work from the 1730s until the year before his death in 1764.
While Hogarth is well known as a portrait painter and engraver, he is also credited with establishing a new kind of narrative scene known as "modern moral subject" or "comic history painting." These works are concerned with immoral behavior that resulted during the eighteenth century from the rise of the middle class and the intermingling of aristocracy and lower levels of society.
Six panels from his famous series "Marriage a-la-Mode" outline the dissolution of a marriage between a middle-class woman and an aristocratic gentleman. In eighteenth-century Britain, arranged marriages between daughters of wealthy merchants and sons of the declining aristocracy became prevalent.
These loveless conjugal unions allowed the middle classes to attain the status symbol of an aristocratic family name. In exchange for their family title, the waning aristocrats received money from the wealthy merchants so that they could continue to live lavish lifestyles.
Hogarth originally painted the scenes of "Marriage a-la-Mode" on six canvases, but these scenes are much more famous in their printed form.
As the growing middle class expanded during the eighteenth century, so did their interest in fine arts. Middle class patrons enjoyed buying the affordable print versions for a price equivalent to their daily wages.
While Hogarth's prints clearly reveal his artistic capabilities, his shrewd financial skills are less easily discerned. Hogarth engraved and printed many of his own compositions to avoid sharing the profits with a middleman. By making himself his own distributor, he could control the quality and subject matter of his product, as well as benefit fruitfully from the sales.
Hogarth was the main proponent of the 1735 Engraver's Copyright Act which helped to shield an artist's work from piracy for 14 years after it is first published.
In addition to the series "Marriage a-la-Mode" the exhibition also features four prints from the "The Four Times of Day"as well as other individual prints. These works often parody the immoral behavior of modern society, affected by industrialization and the rise of urban living.
But more importantly, the prints highlight the victims of contemptible behavior. Whether the victim is a diseased adulteress's small child or an emaciated cat nearly starved to death by his miserly owner, the humanistic scope of Hogarth's prints allow them to transcend temporal and cultural divides.
Two lectures will be offered in conjunction with the exhibition. On October 15 at 5:30 PM professor James Heffernan, Frederick Sessions Beebe Professor in the Art of Writing, will deliver a lecture titled "Hockney Rewrites Hogarth: A Gay Rake Progresses to America," which will draw correlations between the work of William Hogarth and the art of contemporary British artist David Hockney.
Peter Wagner, Professor of English at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany, will give a talk on "Hogarthian Representations of Time' at 5:00 PM on October 21. Both lectures take place in Loew Auditorium.
"'Pictur'd Moral': Prints by William Hogarth" will be mounted in the Harrington Gallery on the second level of the Hood until 26 October. The exhibition was generously supported through the Harrington Gallery Fund and the Andrew W. Mellon Fund.
"Pictur'd Morals" is presented in conjuction with the Northeast Conference on British Studies which was held at the College in late September.
The exhibition will also be used by students enrolled in "The Art of the Eighteenth Century." The course is taught by Assistant Art History Professor Angela Rosenthal.
