Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/777

 HOGARTH 759 HOGARTH, George, a British writer on music, >rn in Scotland about 1797, died Feb. 12, 1870. early life he was a writer to the signet in Edinburgh, but went to London as a musical critic and author. In 1836 he published " Mu- sical History, Biography, and Criticism" (en- larged ed., 1838), and in 1839 "Memoirs of the Musical Drama," of which an abridged edition, under the title of " Memoirs of the Opera Ita-, France, Germany, and England," appeared 1851. He published some other miscellane- s works on music, was for many years musi- cal and dramatic editor of the " Morning Chron- icle," and on the establishment of the "London Daily News," edited by his son-in-law, Charles Dickens, became its musical critic. His wri- s are considered standard authorities on the bjects of which they treat. HOGARTH, or more properly Hogart, William, an English painter, born in London in 1697, or according to some authorities in 1698, died Oct. 26, 1764. His father, who was the son of a Westmoreland yeoman, and by profession a teacher and an occasional corrector of the press, could do little more for him than " put him in the way of shifting for himself." His education was therefore scanty ; but his early taste for design was evinced in the number and variety of the ornaments with which his school books were adorned. He was appren- ticed to a silversmith, and, in the intervals of his labors in engraving arms and ciphers, gradually acquired a knowledge of drawing from nature. At 20 years of age engraving on copper was^his utmost ambition. The first in- dication of the direction his talents were to take was given in a humorous illustration of a pothouse brawl, of which he was a witness. Upon the expiration of his apprenticeship in 1718 he attended the lectures of Sir James Thornhill, sergeant painter to the king, and drew from the life at the academy in St. Mar- tin's lane, but without attaining any great pro- ficiency. His first employment seems to have been the engraving of shop bills and arms, after which he furnished frontispieces and plates for books, of which his illustrations of " Hudibras " afford a not very felicitous example, as he was always more successful in illustrating his own ideas than those of others. Having mean- while acquired some facility in painting, he en- deavored to find employment in painting por- traits, a branch of his art in which he might have attained eminence had he chosen. Thus struggling on, and always contriving, as he tells us, to be "a prompt paymaster," he ven- tured in 1730 upon a " stolen union " with the daughter of his former master, Sir James Thorn- hill, which at first proved very unpalatable to the court painter; but when his son-in-law began to gain distinction Sir James became reconciled to the young couple. Shortly after his marriage Hogarth adopted portrait painting as a profession, and also commenced what he called "small conversation pieces," in which the figures were drawn from the life, and often in humorous attitudes, though not burlesques. From this class of subjects lie naturally pro- ceeded to those more earnest scenes of daily life on which his fame rests. In 1734 appeared the six prints of " The Harlot's Progress," de- signed and engraved by himself, and the artist at once became famous. Upward of 1,200 subscribers entered their names for the series, of which eight piratical imitations almost im- mediately appeared, to the detriment of the painter, who in 1735 procured the passage of an act of parliament securing to an engraver the copyright of his plates for 14 years. Rec- ognizing by the applause which greeted these works his true path to fortune, he renounced portrait painting, and followed up his success by "The Rake's Progress," "Industry and Idleness," " Marriage a la Mode," " The Four Times of the Day," "The Four Stages of Cru- elty," "Beer Lane" and " Gin Lane," and other works, in series or single, which were engraved by himself, and were produced at regular inter- vals until the close of his life. Appearing at a time when the national eiforts in art were few and feeble, they won a popularity which has perhaps increased with time, and to which that of no contemporary artist can be compared. To the last he retained his wonderful powers, and a careful comparison of all his works will show no lack of invention or satiric humor in any of them. Like many men of genius, Ho- garth had his foibles, and among them was the impression that historical painting was his true vocation. He railed at the old masters, espe- cially deriding the pretensions of connoisseurs and the popular estimates of the value of old pictures, and undertook to show that no pre- liminary training was necessary to produce a good historical painting. The result was his "Paul before Felix," "The Pool of Bethesda," and some other works executed at the outset of his career; and " Sigismunda," painted in 1759, in competition with a picture on the same subject by Correggio, and in direct illus- tration of his principle. The ridicule which the last mentioned picture encountered equalled that bestowed upon his " Analysis of Beauty " (4to, London, 1753), the leading principle of which is that a curved line, in shape somewhat like the letter S, is the foundation of all beau- ty. But Hogarth preserved his equanimity until his quarrel in 1762 with Wilkes and Churchill, which he seems to have provoked by a print, entitled "The Times," indirectly ridiculing "Wilkes and the opponents of the ministry. Wilkes replied in a strain of coarse abuse in the 17th number of the "North Briton," and Churchill in a poetical epistle lashed the paint- er, and more particularly " Sigismunda," with all his strong powers of satire. Hogarth re- venged himself upon his opponents with his pencil, depicting the former simply in his natu- ral ugliness, with a Satanic leer which the dem- agogue could not but acknowledge was genu- ine, and the latter as a canonical bear, holding a pot of porter and hugging a post inscribed