Hogarth: place and progress

Abstract

A highly illustrated journey through Hogarth's series paintings and engravings, from the blockbuster 'Rake's Progress and Marriage a la Mode' to the enigmatic and lesser known Happy Marriage this book offers a close analysis of place and setting in Hogarth's works' in order to revisit the artist's complex stance on morality, society, and the city, and the enduring appeal of his satires in the present. William Hogarth (1697-1764) remains one of Britain's best loved painters. His most renowned works, the series relating to moral subjects, are rarely displayed together, and will be united at the Soane Museum for the first time in its history. The book also focusses tightly on Hogarth's series; The Soane Museum's own Rake's Progress and An Election, as well as Marriage a la Mode, the Four Times of Day, as well as the three surviving paintings of The Happy Marriage engraved series such as Stages of Cruelty, Industry and Idleness and Gin Lane and Beer Street. It is edited by David Bindman, a world authority on Hogarth and comprises four essays by leading academics, along with Bindman's own introduction to each of the series according to the themes of "place" and "progress".

Contents

Hogarth : place and progress / David Bindman and Bruce Boucher -- Soane and Hogarth / Bruce Boucher -- Hogarth : the people's artist? / David Bindman -- Rewards of virtue : Hogarth and the pictorial sequence / Frédéric Ogée -- Rewards of virtue : Hogarth's The happy marriage / Jacqueline Riding -- Catalogue.