William Hogarth

William Hogarth’s
early work, which emerged around 1728 and shortly thereafter, came as
a surprise. He hadn’t done an apprenticeship, studied under a master,
attended an art academy or school, or even spent time in other painters’
studios. ‘He was’, according to Joseph Burke, ‘practically
self-taught.., [and] despite his relationship with James Thornhill’ and,
even if he had attended Saint Martin’s Lane Academy, he was completely
unknown to his contemporaries as a painter. His case was a fairly rare,
if not unique. From what is known, he had, up until then, dedicated himself
assiduously and exclusively to the art of the burin. Yet his early paintings
reveal a surprising mastery and originality, not to mention a certain
culture and awareness of contemporary work.
Jean Antoine Watteau had died a few years earlier and Chardin had just
presented The ray for admission to the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
In Venice, G.B. Tiepolo was still commuting between the lagoon and Udine,
where he was employed by the Dolfin family, and was getting ready to start
work on Palazzo Archinto in Milan. Antonio Canal was about to begin an
unusual relationship with Joseph Smith, who, as his only ‘intermediary’,
would direct his by now copious production of view paintings an almost
exclusively ‘Anglo-Saxon’ destination. Not to mention G.B. Piazzetta,
who was very active (he had just finished St Dominic in Glory
at SS. Giovanni e Paolo), but somewhat outside the more lively and trends
then underway in certain parts of Europe.
Coming back to art in England, a considerably important event concerned
James Thornhill (Hogarth’s father-in-law) who, having managed to win two
major public commissions – one for the dome of St Paul’s cathedral in
London (which he completed in 1717) and one for the ceiling of the ‘Great
Hall’ of the Royal Hospital of Greenwich (finished in l 1727) – became
known as the first and only great English Baroque decorator, thereby breaking,
in this field as well, the hegemony the French and Italians had had in
Great Britain.
From his first group portraits, the so-called ‘conversation pieces’, to
the theatre scenes, to the moral series (first, in chronological order,
The career of the prostitute, presented at the exhibition with two paintings),
to the portraits, to the two self-portraits, to the episode of the ‘cronaca
nera’ of Sarah Malcolm in prison, etc., Hogarth pursued his ‘career’
as a painter with commitment and sureness equal only to his natural talent
as a ‘master of colour’. In his works the narrative, satirical
values, full of social commitment of literary culture, showed 
his talent and are an essential part of his rich personality.
Credit goes to modern criticism for having recognized his greatestness
as a painter, just as credit goes to the scholars of recent decades for
having indagato in ogni sua parte and from the most svariate angles, the
vast graphic oeuvre, through which Hogarth ha diffuso his thought. He
was a modern artist in this as well: he expressed his moral commitment
according to ideas in which he firmed believed, but he always maintained
autononous, independent, free his capacity for expression, detached by
contingent facts, like academies and schools, or determinant social groups.
Always on the front line in the battle of ideas – another fact that brings
him close to the sensitivity of our times – he was well aware of all the
possible ways of communicating information, he wrote and even published
a book. The analysis of beaurty, where to intervene with lucidity to complete
what had not managed to be expressed with the engravings.

Venice, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore
26 August – 12 November 1989

Information
Institute of Art History
Island of San Giorgio Maggiore – 30124 Venice
tel. +39 041 2710230
fax +39 041 5205842
e-mail: arte@cini.it