Seated beside his pug dog, Trump, William Hogarth (1697-1764) portrayed himself propped up on volumes of Shakespeare, Milton and Swift in the self-portrait he completed in 1745, when he was forty-eight years old. By this time Hogarth had established himself as a satirist, history painter, and portraitist; his prosperity reflected in the properties he owned in Leicester Fields and in Chiswick, and the commissions he had begun to receive for conversation pieces from noblemen and gentlemen.
Having started his career as an engraver producing book illustrations, trade cards, and funeral tickets, Hogarth began to build a reputation in graphic satire during the 1720’s. A year after he had enrolled at St Martin’s Academy, where he was taught life drawing under Vanderbank and Chéron, he published ‘The South Sea Scheme’ (1721), a brazen attack on the disastrous financial speculation that had swept through the country.
Although Hogarth continued to produce portraits and genre paintings, during the 1740’s and 1750’s he began to specialise in modern moral subjects. ‘A Harlot’s Progress’ (the paintings were recorded as destroyed in 1755, and the series is known from the six engravings published in 1732) tells the tragic story of Moll Hackabout, who arriving in London from the country, succumbs to prostitution and, in the final scene, is fatally struck by a venereal disease.
Hogarth’s moral subjects made him extremely popular, and he became known for depicting the low-life characters of 18th Century London such as prostitutes, gaolers, highwaymen, murderers, and corrupt lawyers. This dubious cast of characters became the subject of numerous satirical engravings; ‘A Harlot’s Progress’ was followed by ‘A Rake’s Progress’ (1735) ‘Marriage à la Mode’ (1743-5), and ‘Industry and Idleness’ (1747).
In June 1757 he was appointed Sergeant-Painter to the King, and from then on earned a small fortune each year from fees for supervising decorative works, while continuing to produce history paintings and political prints.
During his lifetime Hogarth took on the cause of British art and, in addition to setting up a drawing academy and creating an exhibiting space for young artists, was instrumental in the passing of the Engravers’ Copyright Act which prohibited unauthorised copies of engravings for fourteen years after their first publication. The latter had fundamental consequences for printmaking, which enjoyed a surge in popularity following the Act.
While Hogarth’s style and subject matter owed much to the tradition of Dutch genre painting, contemporary artists continue to draw inspiration from Hogarth’s paintings and prints, such as Paula Rego, Yinka Shonibare and the cartoonists, Adam Dant and Ronald Searle.
‘Industry and Idleness’ (1747)
“Industry and Idleness exemplified, in the conduct of the two Fellow-prentices: where the one, by taking good courses, and pursuing those points for which he was put apprentice, becomes a valuable man, and an ornament to his country: whilst the other, giving way to idleness, naturally falls into poverty and most commonly ends fatally, as is expressed in the last Print.” – William Hogarth
In October 1747 the ‘London Evening Post’ carried an advertised Hogarth’s new series of engravings. Titled ‘Industry and Idleness’ the reviewer described them for prospective buyers as ‘Shewing the Advantages attending the former, and the miserable Effects of the Latter, in the different Fortunes of two APPRENTICES’. The appearance of the prints was timely, their publication coinciding with a period of fear in the capital as, alongside a boom in city’s population, the rise in crime and social unrest were perceived as threats to the country’s security and prosperity.
The series of twelve prints complemented a pamphlet produced by Hogarth’s friend, Henry Fielding. London’s chief magistrate from the 1740’s, Fielding published ‘Inquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase in Robbery, etc.’, in 1751, the findings of which revealed, shockingly, that crime was more lucrative than honest hard work, and that drunkenness, especially excessive gin drinking by the poor, was one of the main causes of immorality. George Lillo’s play ‘The London Merchant: or, the History of George Barnwell’ (1731) was also a direct influence on Hogarth. This tragic performance revolved around an originally honest apprentice who, under the influence of an immoral woman, takes to thievery, and later murder. Like Tom Idle in ‘Industry and Idleness’ he is eventually executed for his crimes.
Produced on affordable paper, and at a cost of only 12/-, (in contrast to ‘Marriage à la Mode’, which was priced at £2 for six prints), ‘Industry and Idleness’ was intended for a wide audience, and complemented his previous moralising cycles, including ‘A Harlot’s Progress’ and ‘A Rake’s Progress’. The series is set in the London’s East End, where Hogarth was born and where he undertook an apprenticeship to a silversmith (in his ‘Autobiographical Notes’ Hogarth describes his own idleness during this time). It follows the contrasting lives of Francis Goodchild and Tom Idle whose fate Hogarth makes apparent in the first scene. The former is positioned next to a sign inscribed ‘Whittington/Ld Mayor’ and ‘Valiant London Prentice’ whilst the latter is identified with the harlot ‘Moll Flanders’, the heroine of Defoe’s novel (1722).
Throughout the series, as Idle plunges from garret to night cellar gambling and thieving, Goodchild frequents the master weaver’s counting office, and dines at a City banquet. Idle’s face becomes increasingly contorted throughout the series and, already saturated with details, the engravings become increasingly complex as his fate becomes sealed. Despite following such divergent paths the two men meet again in the tenth plate, and Goodchild, ignoring the pleading Idle, sentences his fellow apprentice to the gallows at Tyburn.
Hogarth’s clear and intelligible imagery, complemented by the Biblical quotations in the cartouches, further articulated the respective fortunes of Goodchild and Idle, and was a huge success. The author of the pamphlet ‘The Effects of Industry and Idleness Illustrated’ (1745) stated:
“Walking some Weeks ago from Temple-Bar to ‘Change in a pensive Humour, I found myself interrupted at every Print-Shop by a Croud of People of all Ranks gazing at Mr Hogarth’s Prints of ‘Industry and Idleness’.”
Hogarth was enthused to learn about a sermon inspired by the series, and that masters were purchasing sets of prints to give out to their apprentices as Christmas gifts. A closer look however reveals a more ambiguous message. In a number of the prints Hogarth reveals his loathing for bourgeois values and civic authority and, even more tellingly, Goodchild’s cowering expression and the bribe being received by the court official in the tenth plate, indicates that a miscarriage of justice may have taken place. The viewer is left questioning whether an innocent man has been hanged.
Industry & Idleness 