Hogarth and Europe
I liked the way this show gave a social and political history of the 18th century through the work of Hogarth but also looked at how he was influenced by work on the continent and similarly how he influenced European art at the time. It was quite a complex but interesting narrative leading me to discover some artists who were new to me and telling me a lot more about the times.
The first room looked at the changing role of the artist at the time with less work done to commission and more for the market. It showed how Hogarth had to advertise himself and exploited the growing demand for prints amongst the growing middle classes.
There was a good room on Hogarth’s great moral series “A Harlot’s Progress” and “A Rake’s Progress” which highlighted a new kind of story-telling and placing them in the same oeuvre as Dutch genre pictures. Similarly a section on new leisure pursuits such as theatres and pleasure gardens draws parallels between Hogarth and Watteau in France.
Some of the commentaries did get a but preachy but they do lead you to question what you see and more importantly don’t see in Hogarth’s work. The pictures were produced for a certain section of society and tell stories from their viewpoint even when they are poking fun at the people. It notes the lack of black faces despite the fact a lot of the economic prosperity of Britain at the time was based on slave labour.
My favourite section looked at the growth and dynamism of cities at the time focusing on London, Paris, Venice and Amsterdam. I loved the way each city was introduced with an iconic multiple sheet print map. To be honest I could have done with a whole exhibition on this topic with the city become a subject in art for the first time. You forget that Canaletto worked in London at this time and I was pleased to see his painting of Vauxhall Gardens.
Closes 20 March 2022
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