Original antique copper engravings from the original plates. Published by Craddock & Baldwin 1820
Set of 2
In The Analysis of Beauty Hogarth implements six principles that independently affect beauty. Although he concurs that those principles have an effect, he is not determinate on their specific influence. The first principle of beauty Hogarth describes is fitness, which is not in itself a source of beauty, but can be described as a material cause of it. Though the account of fitness on the total beauty of an object is only moderate, it is a necessary cause. Fitness does not necessarily imply purpose. However, improperly implied forms cannot be the source of beauty. It is in this that the necessity of fitness must be seen: if not accounted for, a form cannot readily be assumed beautiful.
The second major principle of beauty is variety. It is the source of beauty, which Hogarth shows us by the contrary notion of "sameness": "sameness", a lack of variety, offends the senses. "The ear is as much offended with one even continued note, as the eye is with being fix'd to a point, or to the view of a dead wall."[3] In contrast, our senses find relief in discovering a certain amount of "sameness" within a varietal experience.
The third notion of regularity is understood as a form of "composed variety": it only pleases us when it is suggestive to fitness. Similar to this notion in effect is simplicity, which enhances the pleasure of variety in that it pleases the eye. The variety which causes a beautiful experience should, so to speak, be tempered by simplicity. On the other hand: simplicity without variety at best does only not displease.
Intricacy is a strange principle in that it does not directly follow from the formal behaviour of a beautiful object. Hogarth means by this the habit which causes us to end up in the whirling game of pursuit, when bit by bit discovering the beauty of an object. Intricacy arises from the love of this pursuit. Every difficulty in understanding or grasping the object enhances the pleasure of overcoming it, to continue the pursuit. There is a direct connection here to the Line of Beauty Hogarth dictates, along which every image is built up. Though the movement of our eye is discrete in itself, the movement of our "Mind's eye" follows a duplicate course of the line, a principal ray of light moving along with the line of sight. The continuous movement of our "Mind's eye" triggers the notion of intricacy.
Quantity, finally, is associated with the notion of the sublime, which, when Hogarth's book appeared, was not yet entirely distinguished from the apprehension of beauty. Hogarth thus does not speak of sublimity, but of greatness. He recognises a great quantity to have an aesthetic effect on the beholder without the necessity of a varietal or fitting form. This should not be exaggerated, as that might lead to absurdities.
William Hogarth FRSA (10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist and social critic, best known for his satirical and often scandalous depictions of London life. His works became widely popular and mass-produced via prints in his lifetime, and he was by far the most significant English artist of his generation.
Hogarth was born in Smithfield in the City of London to a lower-middle-class family. His father underwent periods of mixed fortune and was at one time imprisoned in lieu of outstanding debts when the young Hogarth was just 10, an event which undoubtedly informed William's paintings and prints.
Hogarth apprenticed to a silversmith/engraver at seventeen, by twenty-three Hogarth had set himself up as an independent copper-plate engraver and enrolled in the Academy of Painting in St Martin’s Lane. Throughout the following four decades he pursued both printing and painting with a mixture of skill, innovation and self-promotion, deploying his extraordinary artistic imagination as a way of supporting himself.
Hogarth produced his satirical narratives as descriptive sequences, like chapters in a novel or scenes in a play. These narratives invariably conveyed a moral lesson. In A Harlot's Progress (1732), Hogarth traces a naive country lass being gradually seduced into a life of prostitution; A Rake's Progress (1735) depicts the son of a wealthy landowner squandering his inheritance being cast, destitute and alone, into a mental asylum.
With Hogarth's growing success he used his art to make social and political statements, often targeting the urbanisation of London and the ensuing prevalent crime. Works created in this atmosphere include Industry and Idleness (1747), Gin Lane (1751) and The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751), which respectively addressed embracing the Protestant work ethic, alcoholism and animal welfare.
A highly highly regarded painter, Hogarth was unique in being able to use his talents as an engraver to reproduce his own work in the form of copper-engraved plates, which he then printed from. He thus was able to distribute his works to a much larger audience. These copper-plate engraved prints were published in Hogarth's lifetime but there were also subsequent editions, as the copper-plates changed hands after his death.
His wife, Jane, inherited the plates and continued to sell his work in what was essentially a second edition. When Jane died, her estate passed to Mary Lewis, her cousin; who sold the rights to William Hogarth's copper plates to the publisher John Boydell, who went on to publish a third edition. By 1804, Boydell's business faced insolvency and a few years later in 1820 the copper-plates changed hands again when Craddock & Baldwin acquired them and published the last known edition of Hogarth's works in “The Complete Works of Hogarth”.
In the early 20th century the majority of Hogarth's plates were sold to the British government. During the First World War the need for metal was such that the plates were melted down for the production of munitions.
