Who was William Hogarth

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A.� William Hogarth (1697-1764) was one of the great English artists and a man of remarkably individual character and thought. Hogarth founded a whole genre of moral comment as well as being the first to paint themes from Shakespeare, Milton and the theatre. He is probably best known for satirising the follies of his age.< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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Q.� Early life

A.� William Hogarth was born on 10 November, 1697, the fifth child of Richard Hogarth, a schoolmaster and classical scholar from the north of England who moved to London in the mid-1680s. Richard died in 1718, which meant young William had to go out and earn a wage.

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Q.� As

A.� An apprentice to plate engraver Ellis Gamble, a distant relative. By April, 1720, he set up an independent business as an engraver. His first works included a number of commissions for small etched cards and bookplates, and in 1721 he produced two inventive engraved allegories called The South Sea Scheme and The Lottery.

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Q.� Successfully

A.� The engravings aroused considerable attention and spurred on, he began on a series of satires that made him so widely known in Britain and abroad. A scene from The Beggar's Opera brought him great success about 1730. It was then that his satires began to take off - particularly two series of paintings, A Harlot's Progress and A Rake's Progress. Through the sets of engravings he made from them, Hogarth became famous as a brilliant satirist of moral follies. In fact, they were so successful that unscrupulous engravers began to pirate them - leading to a copyright act, often called Hogarth's Act, in 1735.

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Q.� Most famous pieces

A.� Apart from The Rake's Progress, I would plump for Beer Street and Gin Lane.

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Q.� Why

A.� They were art for the lower classes. Hogarth's engravings were comparatively cheap, which gave him the chance to target a certain class for his moral stories. Beer Street and Gin Lane were produced when the dreadful consequences of gin drinking was at its height. Gin Lane shows its horrid effects: poverty, misery, madness, ruin and death. We see a drunken mother letting her baby fall to its death. We see hollowed-eyed half-skeletons; thriving undertakers and poor wretches pawning their last items for another tot of gin.

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Q.� And Beer Street

A.� Beer, said Hogarth, was much better. This was a much more invigorating liquor. Here in Beer Street, all is joyful and thriving. Industry and jollity go hand in hand. The pawnbroker has been thrown out of business as smiling gentlemen with round stomachs and flagons of foaming ale watch the business world go by.

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Q.� What else did he do

A.� Among his exceptional portraits are David Garrick as Richard III and The Shrimp Girl. In 1757, Hogarth was appointed sergeant painter to George II. During the last five years of his life, Hogarth was engaged in political feuds with the political reformer John Wilkes, whom he had satirised in an engraving. Wilkes retaliated by attacking Hogarth's painting Sigismunda (1759). Hogarth's last engraving, The Bathos, was published in 1764. He died in Chiswick on 26 October that year. His monument bears an epitaph written by his friend, Garrick.

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Steve Cunningham