Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/99

 occasion of the restoration and enlargement of Chiswick Church.

The chief of the portraits of William Hogarth is that by himself in the National Gallery, for which it was purchased in 1824 with the Angerstein collection. He painted it in 1745, and, as already stated, engraved it four years later. It was again engraved by B. Smith on 4 June 1795. Angerstein bought it at Mrs. Hogarth's death. It was ‘an old plate’ of this picture which Hogarth used in 1763 for the caricature of ‘The Bruiser’ (Churchill). A small version of this portrait was exhibited by Mr. John Leighton, F.S.A., at the English Humourists' Exhibition, 1889. Another portrait by the artist himself, which also once belonged to his widow, is now in the National Portrait Gallery. Hogarth engraved it (in part) in 1758, retouching it in 1764. He also appears with Garrick in Mr. Addington's picture of ‘Garrick in the Green Room,’ which was exhibited at the Old Masters in 1880. Other likenesses are the head in a hat from the ‘Gate of Calais;’ the oval head begun by Weltdon and finished by Hogarth; the head in a tie-wig prefixed to vol. i. of Samuel Ireland's ‘Graphic Illustrations;’ and the woodcut with a pipe in Walpole's ‘Anecdotes’ (ed. Major). In the National Portrait Gallery there is a bust in terra-cotta by Roubiliac. Hogarth also painted portraits of his sisters Mary and Ann (which in 1879 were in the possession of Mr. R. C. Nichols, the son of Mr. J. B. Nichols, Hogarth's commentator of 1833); of Sir James Thornhill, his wife, and their son John; of Mary Lewis, and of his six servants. Besides these there is a portrait in the National Gallery of Mary Hogarth, dated 1746. When she died is not known, although she preceded her brother; but her sister Ann survived until 13 Aug. 1771, when she was buried in Hogarth's grave at Chiswick.

It was claimed for Hogarth, in Johnson's variation upon Garrick, that he saw the manners in the face, and his own portrait is the index of his character. The brisk, blue-eyed, manly, intelligent, and somewhat combative head with the scar over the right eye, which looks out from the canvas in the National Gallery, seems to accord completely with his verbal likeness as it has been handed down to us. He was, it is easy to believe, a sturdy, outspoken, honest, obstinate, pugnacious little man who, as one is glad to think, once pummelled a fellow soundly for maltreating the beautiful drummeress whom he drew in ‘Southwark Fair.’ As a companion he was witty and genial, and to those he cared for, thoroughly faithful and generous. He liked good clothes, good living, good order in his household, and he was proud of the rewards of industry and respectability. As a master he was exacting in his demands, but punctual in his payments; as a servant he did a full day's work, and insisted upon his wage. His prejudices, like those of most self-educated men, were strong, and he fought doggedly in defence of them without any attempt to conciliate his adversary. That he was not proof against flattery seems to have been true. In his own walk he had succeeded by a course of training which would have failed with nineteen men out of twenty, and he consequently underrated the teaching of all academies whatsoever. With the art patronage and connoisseurship of his day he was hopelessly at war; he saw in it only the fostering of foreign rubbish at the expense of native merit. But a great deal that has been said on the subject of his attitude to the continental schools of painting has been manifestly exaggerated, and in any circumstances something must be allowed for the warmth of controversy. An artist of Hogarth's parts could not be as insensible to the merits of the great masters as some have pretended. Yet it may well be conceived that such a downright and quick-tongued disputant, in his impatience of the parrot raptures of pretentious and incompetent persons, might easily come to utter ‘blasphemous expressions against the divinity even of Raphael Urbino, Correggio, and Michael Angelo.’ His true attitude towards them is disclosed in his words to Mrs. Piozzi. He was talking to her, late in life, of Dr. Johnson, whose conversation, he said, was to that of other men as Titian's painting compared to Hudson's; ‘but don't you tell people now, that I say so,’ continued he, ‘for the connoisseurs and I are at war, you know; and because I hate them, they think I hate Titian, and let them!’ (Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., ed. 1826, pp. 104–5).

Numerous other stories might be cited in illustration of this outline of Hogarth's character. Side by side with his general hatred of the foreigner was his particular hatred of the French, whom he never fails to ridicule in his works. ‘Calais Gate’ indeed owed its origin to a misadventure which his undisguised Gallophobia brought upon him. In 1749, after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, he paid a brief visit to France with Hayman, Cheere, the sculptor, and some other friends. He did not set out prepared to admire, and he does not seem to have in the least concealed the contempt he felt for the ‘farcical pomp of war,’ the ‘pompous parade of religion,’ and ‘the much bustle with very little business’ which he discovered about him. His frankly expressed opinions speedily attracted atten-