"The Rake's Progress", c. 1732; the masterpiece of the story series the

"Marriage а la Mode" followed after an interval of twelve years.

As a painter of social life, Hogarth shows the benefit of the system

of memory training which he made a self-discipine. London was his universe

and he displayed his mastery in painting every aspect of its people and

architecture, from the mansion in Arlington Street, the interior of which

provided the setting for the disillusioned couple in the second scene of

the "Marriage а la Mode", to the dreadful aspect of Bedlam. Yet he was not

content with one line of development only and the work of his mature years

takes a varied course. He could not resist the temptation to attempt a

revalry with the history painters, though with little successs. The

Biblical compositions for St. Bartholomew's Hospital on which he embarked

after "The Rake's Progress" were not of a kind to convey his real genius.

He is sometimes satirical as in "The March of the Guards towards Scotland",

and the "Oh the Roast Beef of Old England!(Calais Gate)", which was a

product of his single expeditionabroad with its John Bull comment on the

condition of France, and also the "Election"series of 1755 with its

richness of comedy. In portraiture he displays a great variety. The charm

of childhood, the ability to compose a vivid group, a delightful delicacy

of colour appear in the "Graham Children" of 1742. The portrait heads of

his servants are penetrating studies of character. The painting of Captain

Coram, the philanthropic sea captain who took a leading part in the

foundation of the Foundling Hospital, adapts the formality of the

ceremonial portrait to a democratic level with a singularlyengaging

effects. The quality of Hogarth as an artist is seen to advantage in his

sketches and one sketch in particular, the famous "Shrimp Girl" quickly

executed with a limited range of colour, stands alone in his work, taking

its place among the masterpieces of the world in its harmonyof form and

content, its freshness and vitality.

The genius of Hogarth is such that he is often regarded as a solitary

rebel against a decaying artificiality, and yet though he had no pupils, he

had contemporaries who, while of lesser stature in one way and another,

tended in the same direction.

William Hogarth expressed in his art the new mood of national

elation, the critical spirit of the self-confident bourgeoisie and the

liberal humanitarianism of his age. He was the first native-born English

painter to become a hero of the Enlightenment. One reason for his

popularity was that the genius of the age found its highest expression in

wit. From Moliиre to Votaire, from Congreve through Swift and Pope to

Fielding, the literature of wit was enriched on a scale unprecedent since

antiquity. The great comic writers of the century exposed folly, scarified

pretension and lashed hypocrisy and cruelty.

It was the great and single-handed achievement of Hogarth to

establish comedy as a category in art to be rated as highly as comedy in

literature. According to the hierarchy of artistic categories that was

inherited from the Renaissance, istoria, --the narrative description of

elevated themes, especially from the Bible and antiquity --was the highest

branch of art measured by a scale which placed low-life genre at the

bottom.

Hogarth was actually sensitive to the categorical deprecation of

comic art, and with his friend Henry Fielding set about a campaign to raise

its standing.

In a number of works and statements Hogarth identified his cause with

comic literature. In his self -portrait of 1745 the oval canvas rests on

the works of Shakespeare, Milton and Swift. Because his reasons for

invoking literature were misunderstood, Hogarth exposed himself to the

charge of being a "literary" artist. The legend of the literary painter

can be traced back to his own age. "Other pictures we look at, "wrote

Charles Lamb, "his prints we read." Some of the blame for aesthetic

deprecation must be placed on the shoulders of Hogarth himself. He seems

to have even encouraged an image which mystified his critics. He remarked

of the connoisseurs "Because I hate them, they think I hate Titian and let

them!" He outraged Horace Walpole by saying that he could paint a portrait

as well as Van Dyck. He compared nature with art, to the desadvantage of

the latter.

If his statements are examined carefully, it becomes apparent that he

did not attack foreign art as such, that he passionately admired the Old

Masters.

What manner of man was he who executed thse portraits--so various, so

faithful, and so admirable? In the London National Gallery most of us have

seen the best and most carefully finished series of his comic paintings,

and the portrait of his own honest face, of which the bright blue eyes

shine out from the canvas and give you an idea of that keen and brave look

with which William Hogarth regarded the world. No man was ever less of a

hero; you see him before you, and can fancy what he was --a jovial, honest

London citizen, stout and sturdy; a hearly, plain-spoken man, loving his

laugh, his friend, his glass, his roast-beef of Old England, and having a

proper bourgeois scorn for foreign fiddlers, foregn singers, and, above

all, for foreign painters, whom he held in the most amusing contempt.

Hogarth's "Portraits of Captain Coram"

Hogarth painted his portrait of Capitain Coram in 1740, and donated

it the same year to the Foundling Hospital.

It was painted on Hogarth's own initiative, without having been

commissioned, and was presented to a charitable institution in the making,

one of whose founder members Hogarth was, and it depicts a friend of his,

the prime mover of the whole undertaking. The very format of the picture

shows that Hogarth was exerting all his powers to produce a masterpiece.

It measures about 2.4 by 1.5 metres, the biggest portrait Hogarth ever

painted.

In producing a work like this, of monumental proportions, where there

was no purchaser to sistort the artist's intentions, Hogarth mst have had a

definite aim or aims, and it is probable that he desired his work to

express something of significance to him at this period of time.

The portrait is conceived in the great style, with foreground plus

repoussoir, middle-ground, background, classical column and drapery. Coram

is depicted sitting on a chair, which is placed on a platform with two

steps leading up to it.

Hogarth makes use of the conventional scheme, traditional in

portraits of rulers and noblemen, with its column, drapery and platform as

laudatory symbols to stress the subject's dignity, a composition, which in

the England of that time, was usually associated with Van Dyck's much

admired but old-fashioned protraits of kings and noblemen. Hogarth's

painting, with its attributes and symbols is not far removed form history

painting. But the subject is a sea-captain, whose social position did not,

by the fixed conventions for this category of picture, entitle him to this

kind of portrayal. His relatively modest position in society is emphasized

by his simple dress, a broad-coat of cloth, by the absence of the wig

obligatory for every parson of standing, and by the intimace and realism

with which the artist has depicted this figure with his broad, stocky body,

shose short, bent legs do not reach the floor.

The mode of depiction refers back to , and creates in the beholder an

expectation of a somewhat schematized and idealized manner of human

portrayal. But by depicting Coram in an intimate and realistic fashion

Hogarth breaks the mould. In one and the same work he has made use of the

means of expression of both the great and the low style. By making

apparent the low social status of his subject, Hogarth seems also to wish

to breach the classic doctrine, whose scale of values provided the

foundation of the theories about the division of painting into distinct

categories, where the nature of the theme determined a picture's place on

the scale "high" to "low".

5.2) Sir Joshua Reynolds(1723-1792)

To feel to the full the contrast between Reynolds and Hodarth, there

is no better way than to look at their self-portraits. Hogarth's of 1745

in the Tate Gallery, Reynolds's of 1773 in the Royal Academy. Hogarth had

a round face, with sensuous lips, and in his pictures looks you straight in

face. He is accompanied by a pug-dog licking his lip and looking very much

like his master. The dog sits in front of the painted oval frame in which

the portrait appears--that is the Baroque trick of a picture within a

picture. Reynolds scorns suck tricks. His official self-portrait shows

him in an elegant pose with his glove in his hand, the body fitting nicely

into the noble triangular outline which Raphael and Titian had favoured,

and behind him on the right appears a bust of Michelangelo.

This portrait is clearly as programmatic as Hogarth's. Reynolds's

promramme is known to us in the greatest detail. He gave altogether

fifteen discourses to the students of the Academy, and they were all

printed. And whereas Hogarth's Analysis of Beaty was admired by few and

neglected by most--Reynolds's Discourses were international reading.

What did Reynolds plead for? His is on the whole a con sistent

theory. "Study the great masters...who have stood the test of ages, " and

especially "study the works to notice"; for "it is by being conversant with

the invention of others that we learn to invent". Don't be "a mere copier

of nature", don't "amuse mankind with the minute neatness of your

imitations, endeavour to impress them by the grandeur of [...] ideas".

Don't strive for "dazzling elegancies" of brushwork either, form is

superior to colour, as idea is to ornament. The history painter is the

painter of the highest order; for a subject ought to be "generally

interesting". It is his right and duty to "deviate from vulgar and strict

historical truth". So Reynolds would not have been tempted by the

reporter's attitude to the painting of important con-temporary events. With

such views on vulgar truth and general ideas, the portrait painter is ipso

facto inferior to the history painter. Genre, and landscape and still life

rank even lower. The student ought to keep his "principal attention fixed

upon the higher excellencies. If you compass them, and compass nothing

more, you are still first, class... You may be very imperfect, but still

you are an imperfect artist of the highest order".

This is clearly a consistent theory, and it is that of the Italian

and even more of the French seventeenth century. There is nothing

specifically English in it. But what is eminently English about Reynolds

and his Discourses is the contrast between what he preached and what he

did. History painting and the Grand Manner, he told the stu-dents, is what

they ought to aim at, but he was a portrait painter most exclusively, and

an extremely successful one.

Reynold's "Mrs Siddons as the Tragic

Muse": the Grand Manner Taken

Seriously

For anyone coming to the painting with a fresh eye the first

impression must surely be one of dignity and solem-nity. It is an

impression created not only by the pose and bearing of the central figure

herself, and her costume, but also by the attitude of her two shadowy

attendants, by the arrangement of the figures, and by the colour. The

colour must appear as one of the most remarkable features of the painting.

To the casual glance the picture seems monochromatic. The dominant tone is

a rich golden brown, interrupted only by the creamy areas of the face and

arms and by the deep velvety shadows of the background. On closer

examination a much greater variety in the colour is appar-ent, but the

first impression remains valid for the painting as a unit.

The central figure sits on a thronelike chair. She does not look at

the spectator but appearsan deep contemplation; her expression is one of

melancholy musing. Her gestures aptly reinforce the meditative air of the

head and also contribute to the regal quality of the whole figure. A great

pendent cluster of pearls adorns the front of her dress. In the heavy,

sweeping draperies that envelop the figure there are no frivolous elements

of feminine costume to conflict with the initial effect of solemn grandeur.

In the background, dimly seen on either side of the throne, are two

attendant figures. One, with lowered head and melancholy expression, holds

a bloody dagger; the other, his features contorted into an expression of

horror, grasps a cup. Surely these figures speak of violent events. Their

presence adds a sinister impression to a picture already eavily charged

with grave qualities.

At the time the portrait was painted, Sarah Siddons was in her late

twenties, but she already.had a soli.d decade of acting experience behind

her. She was born in 1755, the daughter of Roger Kemble, manager of an

itinerant com-pany of actors. Most of her early acting experience was with

her father's company touring through English provincial centres. Her

reputation rose so quickly that in 1775, when she was only twenty, she was

engaged by Garrick to perform at Drury Lane. But this early London

adventure proved premature; she was unsuccessful and retired again to the

provincial circuits, acting principally at Bath. She threw her full

energies into building her repertory and perfecting her acting technique,

with the result that her return to London as a tragic actress in the autumn

of 1782, was one of the great sensations of theatre history. Almost

overnight she found herself the unquestioned first lady of the British

stage, a position she retained for thirty years. The leading intellectuals

and statesmen of the day were among her most fervent admirers and were in

constant attendance at her performance.

Among the intelligentsia who flocked to see the great actress and

returned again and again was Sir Joshua Reynolds, the august president of

the Royal Academy. He was at the time the most respected painter in

England, and he also enjoyed a wide reputation as a theorist on art.

Reynolds moved with ease among the great men of his day. Mrs Siddons

remarks in her memoirs: "...At his house were assembled all the good, the

wise, the talented, the rank and fashion of the age."

The painting is in fact a brilliantly successful synthe-sis of images

and ideas from a wide variety of sources.

The basic notion of representing Mrs Siddons in the guise of the

Tragic Muse may well have been suggested to Reynolds by a poem honouring

the actress and published early in 1783. The verses themselves are not

distinguished, but the title and the poet's initial image of Mrs Siddons

enthroned as Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, may have lodged in Reynolds's

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