Description
Originally published in 1971, Paulson’s monumental critical biography has been fully revised and updated, reflecting the growth of Paulson’s own knowledge and interest in the eighteenth century and its artists. Tracing Hogarth’s career from his great success with A Harlot’s Progress to the unravelling of his reputation, Paulson examines Hogarth’s artistic output alongside his shifting relationship to his audience. At once inside and outside the system, a purveyor of high art and low, Hogarth’s recognition of the changing art market and his audacious anticipation of the Reynolds generation mark him as just as innovative as he was ubiquitous in his generation.
Paulson’s crucial analysis and biographical detail provides a thorough, nuanced understanding of Hogarth, his art, and his personal and public relationships. The comprehensive biography of this intriguing, pioneering artist and his reception by an oft-contradictory audience, Hogarth remains crucial for through study and accessible to the interested reader.
About the Author
Ronald Paulson is Emeritus Professor of the Humanities at The Johns Hopkins University. He has written extensively on art in the 18th century, and served as an editor for English Literary History. He is considered a leading expert on Hogarth.
Contents
Volume I: The Modern Moral Subject 1697-1732
List of Illustrations
Preface
From the Preface of the Frist Edition
1. Shades of the Prison House: A London Childhood, 1697-1714
2. “The Monsters of Heraldry”: Apprenticeship and the Profession of Engraver, 1714-1720
3. “The Bad Taste of the Town,” 1720-1724
4. A Native English History Painting: Thornhill and the “English Don Quixote,” Hudibras, 1720-1726
5. Learning to Paint: Falstaff and The Beggar’s Opera, 1727-1729
6. Contemporary History and Marriage, 1729
7. Conversation Pictures, 1728-1732
8. The “Modern Moral Subject”: A Harlot’s Progress, 1730-1732
9. Contexts (Visual and Verbal) for the Harlot
10. Publication, Reception, and Significance of the Harlot
Notes
General Index
Index of Hogarth’s Works
Volume II: High Art and Low 1732-1750
List of Illustrations
Preface
1. Patron and Public (I): Paintings and Prints, 1732-1733
2. Patron and Public (II): A Rake’s Progress and the Engravers’ Act, 1733-1735
3. Public and Private Life in the 1730s
4. St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and New Testament History Painting, 1734-1738
5. The Mediating Woman: Literary history Paintings and Artist Satires, 1737-1741
6. Urban Pastoral: The Four Times of the Day, 1737-1738
7. Portrait Painting, 1738-1745
8. Richardson, Fielding, “Comic History-Painting,” and the Rise of the Novel
9. Marriage-a-la-mode, 1742-1745
10. Garrick and the Theatre: Public and Private Life in the 1740s
11. Popular Prints (I): Lord Lovat and The Stage Coach, 1746-1747
12. Popular Prints (II): Industry and Idleness, 1747
13. Public Paintings: The Foundling Hospital and Lincoln’s Inn, 1740-1750
14. The March to Finchley, 1749-1750
Notes
General Index
Index of Hogarth’s Works
Volume III: Art and Politics 1750-1764
List of Illustrations
Preface
1. Hogarth’s Reputation and the Idea of an Academy
2. Popular and Polite Prints, 1751-1752
3. Aesthetic, Erotics, and Politics: The Analysis of Beauty, 1752-1753 (I): The Text
4. The Analysis of Beauty (II): The Illustrations
5. The Analysis of Beauty (III): Reception
6. Electoral Politics: Four Prints of an Election, 1754-1758
7. The Politics of Art, 1754-1758
8. Last History Paintings, 1755-1759
9. Covert Politics: Beautiful Versus Sublime, 1758-1760
10. Special Commissions
11. Portraits and Likenesses
12. The Art Exhibitions of 1760-1761
13. The Sign Painters’ Exhibition of 1762
14. Overt Politics: The Times, Plate 1, 1762
15. The Times, Plate 2, 1762-1763
16. “Finis”: The Tail Pieces, 1763-1764
Notes
General Index
Index of Hogarth’s Works
Endorsements and Reviews
This is the definitive work and, barring almost inconceivable future scholarly finds, will remain the definitive work. Art in America
Henceforth no one working in any field that Hogarth touched can afford not to begin with Mr. Paulson’s splendid book. Times Literary Supplement.
This is an astonishing book, and I don’t know when I last read anything on the 18th century from which I learned as much. It is a quite remarkably full chronicle of Hogarth’s life, based on the exhaustive information Paulson has exhumed from manuscript records, from newspapers, and from the writings of his contemporaries […]. Nothing so ambitious has been attempted for any other British artist of the period, and no one else would have the range of learning necessary to make the attempt. John Barrell, London Review of Books, Vol. 16, No. 7, 7 April 1994
Henceforth no one working in any field that Hogarth touched can afford not to begin with Mr. Paulson’s splendid book. Times Literary Supplement.
Truly indispensable. Studies in English Literature
