Commonplace 89 George & The Influence of William Hogarth PART TWO The Four Stages of Cruelty And Moral Blindness.
George was a big fan of the works of William Hogarth, whose depictions of London life in the eighteenth century are some of the best social documents of that time. Charles Dickens might weave a melodrama from the scenes of poverty and deprivation that he witnessed, but a generation before, Hogarth was telling it like it was, as close to documentary as any Artist was in his time. Hogarth's moral tales were satires of all classes and all ages of life, and had the added advantage of being accessible to everyone who saw them - in his time, cheap prints would be available pasted up on hoardings for all to appreciate. The advantage to having such scenes presented visually is that you don't need literacy skills to be able to read and enjoy them, or 'read' their messages.
Dickens, with a nod to Voltaire's Pangloss, sought to reassure his reading public that it would all work out in the end, but Hogarth did not do happy endings. For him, it all went wrong sooner or later and your past always catches up with you. Dickens might take George back in a flood of nostalgia to his childhood family gathered round the table opening the parcel containing Our Mutual Friend hot off the press, but Dickens left George's intellectual longings unfulfilled. And little could be gleaned from the tame illustrations, charming, but sanitised. Hogarth was hardcore: Dickens, with his reliance on reading skills, took thousands of words to give us what Hogarth delivers in six small paintings - as in the Harlot's Progress series .
George was commissioned to write on Dickens, and his criticism is interesting and insightful, but if his thoughts on Hogarth had been published, that would have been a fascinating read. Books designed to inspire correct behaviour and to illustrate the folly of pursuing the dark side of life were popular in the Victorian age - though these did not much influence our man! But the dual purpose of some was to titillate as much as instruct - the Newgate Calendar click was a book approximating to Hogarth, revealing insights into the lives of the poor and criminal, the luckless and the gullible, the fathers who failed to make a good income (Hogarth and Dickens), and the young students who picked pockets (you know who).
All these influences must have impacted on George - his opening shot at being a serious author jumped right into the whirlpool of popular obsession with law and order, chaos and control, light and dark. They were adult themes undertaken by a boy who had led a sheltered life - he had dabbled in criminality, received a very short and lenient prison sentence; had tramped round a bit of America like an hobo; he'd lived in a horrible flea pit attic, and acquired a wife he didn't really want, but the truth is, he'd read more about the existence of the disadvantaged than he'd had personal experience of enduring deprivation, himself. It took a few years to convince him he wasn't cut out for the sort of life he thought most Artists and poets were living - or were choosing to live - because that is a fantasy, and the sort of thing he had read in books. It may be easy for some to see George as some sort of crusader in the face of adversity, but, really, he was doing it from choice, not from necessity. He could have chosen another job, moved home to Wakefield, worked as a journalist, wooed a girl he really liked, gone to live on the continent long before he did - all these would have saved him from his self-imposed internal exile and endless 'self-dissatisfaction', and early death. There is nothing but pathos in this - a wrong decision (and a debt paid by prison) allowed to be the unmaking of a potentially well-rounded person.
When Hogarth was a man of increasing influence, the upper middle classes and the Art patrons began to have doubts about him. He had fallen out with many wealthy potential clients, had been on the losing side in a public spat with a fellow Artist who could command great support in denying Hogarth decent commissions. Because he published satirical works shining a light on the inadequacies of the government, the greed and vulgarity of the nouveau riche and the hypocrisy of the church, it was clear that his enemies were just waiting for him to make a mistake. And, though Hogarth openly supported neither of the main political parties, he did have a keen interest in real politics - the politics of Demos and the need of the haves to support the have nots - and did not shrink from putting the blame for the inequalities of life where it was due. His charitable work was unpopular amongst the people who exploited the poor, but one of his greatest successes is still very much with us today - The Royal Academy of Arts.
As a successful Artist, Hogarth worked with his contemporaries such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, to set up the Royal Academy click at a time when Royal societies were being instituted in the sciences. This was instrumental in according Artists a higher status than they had previously enjoyed (the Royal Society of Literature followed in 1820 click). Hogarth's confidence in his talent grew, as did his ambition, but his ideas on how to make Art were not well-received, and would become one of the agents of his downfall.
The Line of Beauty (before the Alan Hollinghurst novel of the same name) was Hogarth's ideal way to compose a picture - it's hard to explain, so click but it is based on the letter 'S'. If you have google play click you can download a free copy of Hogarth's The Analysis of Beauty - o, the wonders of the internet thank you so much Mr Berners-Lee, you are a true hero.
Hogarth's 'Serpentine Line' was an attempt to formalise picture composition, and possibly to have an English alternative to the Classical 'golden section' click of the European masters/mistresses, but it was lampooned by many who were annoyed at his satires. If London Transport had any sense of humour, it would rename the Piccadilly Line as The Serpentine Line - it's the London Underground line that serves the Sloane Museum, the Royal Academy and the Foundling Museum (but the only sense of humour displayed in the nation's capital right now is in its choice of Lord Mayor haha not).
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| Portrait of The Artist's Sister, Anne |
Dickens, with a nod to Voltaire's Pangloss, sought to reassure his reading public that it would all work out in the end, but Hogarth did not do happy endings. For him, it all went wrong sooner or later and your past always catches up with you. Dickens might take George back in a flood of nostalgia to his childhood family gathered round the table opening the parcel containing Our Mutual Friend hot off the press, but Dickens left George's intellectual longings unfulfilled. And little could be gleaned from the tame illustrations, charming, but sanitised. Hogarth was hardcore: Dickens, with his reliance on reading skills, took thousands of words to give us what Hogarth delivers in six small paintings - as in the Harlot's Progress series .
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| Portrait of a Girl |
All these influences must have impacted on George - his opening shot at being a serious author jumped right into the whirlpool of popular obsession with law and order, chaos and control, light and dark. They were adult themes undertaken by a boy who had led a sheltered life - he had dabbled in criminality, received a very short and lenient prison sentence; had tramped round a bit of America like an hobo; he'd lived in a horrible flea pit attic, and acquired a wife he didn't really want, but the truth is, he'd read more about the existence of the disadvantaged than he'd had personal experience of enduring deprivation, himself. It took a few years to convince him he wasn't cut out for the sort of life he thought most Artists and poets were living - or were choosing to live - because that is a fantasy, and the sort of thing he had read in books. It may be easy for some to see George as some sort of crusader in the face of adversity, but, really, he was doing it from choice, not from necessity. He could have chosen another job, moved home to Wakefield, worked as a journalist, wooed a girl he really liked, gone to live on the continent long before he did - all these would have saved him from his self-imposed internal exile and endless 'self-dissatisfaction', and early death. There is nothing but pathos in this - a wrong decision (and a debt paid by prison) allowed to be the unmaking of a potentially well-rounded person.
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| The Shrimp Girl by William Hogarth 1740-5 |
When Hogarth was a man of increasing influence, the upper middle classes and the Art patrons began to have doubts about him. He had fallen out with many wealthy potential clients, had been on the losing side in a public spat with a fellow Artist who could command great support in denying Hogarth decent commissions. Because he published satirical works shining a light on the inadequacies of the government, the greed and vulgarity of the nouveau riche and the hypocrisy of the church, it was clear that his enemies were just waiting for him to make a mistake. And, though Hogarth openly supported neither of the main political parties, he did have a keen interest in real politics - the politics of Demos and the need of the haves to support the have nots - and did not shrink from putting the blame for the inequalities of life where it was due. His charitable work was unpopular amongst the people who exploited the poor, but one of his greatest successes is still very much with us today - The Royal Academy of Arts.
As a successful Artist, Hogarth worked with his contemporaries such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, to set up the Royal Academy click at a time when Royal societies were being instituted in the sciences. This was instrumental in according Artists a higher status than they had previously enjoyed (the Royal Society of Literature followed in 1820 click). Hogarth's confidence in his talent grew, as did his ambition, but his ideas on how to make Art were not well-received, and would become one of the agents of his downfall.
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| Cartoons and Caricatures 1743 |
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| Plate from the title page of Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty |
We go to the Tate Gallery click to explore Hogarth's most profound and abiding work - The Four Stages of Cruelty. These concern the journey through life of Tom Nero, a poor city boy who grows up surrounded by scenes of horror - but, a typical working class child of his time. Go here for an excellent paper on the works click.
The first stage is cruelty to animals. Hogarth, lover of pugs, was appalled at the amount of cruelty inflicted on animals - and set out to suggest it was the basis of all subsequent cruelties. He wrote in his introduction that the plates:
were done in the hopes of preventing in some degree that cruel treatment of poor Animals which makes the streets of London more disagreeable to the human mind, than any thing what ever, the very describing of which gives pain.
Here, his protagonist, Tom Nero, is seen doing unspeakable things to a dog.
Here, his protagonist, Tom Nero, is seen doing unspeakable things to a dog.
We now know that if a child delights in causing suffering to animals, it is usually a sign of a potential serial killer click. Concern about animal cruelty was a new notion in Hogarth's time, when many so-called 'sports' involved hacking defenceless critters to bits. Hogarth set out to show that the poor and the monied classes alike delight in torturing defenceless animals for fun, and suggests to them they all reflect on their base characters.
Child cruelty was akin to animal cruelty - children were not considered to be the little princesses and princes we now know they are, and as many died in infancy, were not considered to have the same sort of sentience as adults. The issue of sentience is important in understanding how the Enlightenment was changing the way the human condition was regarded - and this trickled down to influence the way animals were beginning to be thought of as capable of suffering. Apropos animals, as Jeremy Bentham wrote, 25 years after Hogarth's death: The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer click To his credit, George was always a lover of animals and did his best to care for the damaged critters he found - birds, in particular, and cats seem to have been favourites.
Child cruelty was akin to animal cruelty - children were not considered to be the little princesses and princes we now know they are, and as many died in infancy, were not considered to have the same sort of sentience as adults. The issue of sentience is important in understanding how the Enlightenment was changing the way the human condition was regarded - and this trickled down to influence the way animals were beginning to be thought of as capable of suffering. Apropos animals, as Jeremy Bentham wrote, 25 years after Hogarth's death: The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer click To his credit, George was always a lover of animals and did his best to care for the damaged critters he found - birds, in particular, and cats seem to have been favourites.
The second plate shows evidence that young Tom, now a carter, is skilled at horse beating. The representatives of the Law is in the cart - the horse has collapsed under the strain of carrying them - and they seem indifferent to the animal's suffering, just as they are indifferent to the suffering of their poor customers.
Here, Tom is arrested for breaking and entering and stealing valuables and for murdering a pregnant woman.
And here is the most famous of the series, showing what has become of Tom Nero. After being hanged for his crimes, he is anatomised. Ironic touches - the dog is not eating his heart - he's sniffing it and about to reject it. The anatomist uses the sort of long stick Tom used on that poor dog.
As a child, George would have pored over these images and begun to form his thoughts of what it would mean to live in a big city like London. There was still enough cruelty around when he arrived in Manchester, Boston, Chicago, London, even if you didn't go looking for it. The average poor victim of circumstance that Hogarth presents - the sort who make mistakes, fails at stuff, and misses all the chances in life - is what George would bring to life in his writing. Visual Art is less good at depicting inner turmoil and reflection - this is where the novel takes over as the form of choice for depicting emotions. But the Hogarth mise en scène makes its way into George's work with his famous 'Walk with me, reader into Whitecross Street' (from Workers in the Dawn) and in the carnality and innate cruelty of The Nether World. But he soon fell out of love with what had started out as his romantic delusional social experiment in what working class life is like. By the winter of 1888, after he had finally said goodbye to Marianne aka Nell earlier in that year, and had begun his pilgrimage to Paris and Rome, George's ambition was firmly fixated on the writer's life of fame and affluence - and he would spend the rest of his life searching for that elusive thing called success. Hogarth went on racking up successes in the world of politics with a small 'p'. and in his development as an Artist. London celebrates his life with the wonder that is The Hogarth Roundabout - here, presented by political cartoonist for the Guardian, Martin Rowson
But this is how Hogarth's friend, the actor David Garrick, put it in his epitaph:
Here, Tom is arrested for breaking and entering and stealing valuables and for murdering a pregnant woman.
As a child, George would have pored over these images and begun to form his thoughts of what it would mean to live in a big city like London. There was still enough cruelty around when he arrived in Manchester, Boston, Chicago, London, even if you didn't go looking for it. The average poor victim of circumstance that Hogarth presents - the sort who make mistakes, fails at stuff, and misses all the chances in life - is what George would bring to life in his writing. Visual Art is less good at depicting inner turmoil and reflection - this is where the novel takes over as the form of choice for depicting emotions. But the Hogarth mise en scène makes its way into George's work with his famous 'Walk with me, reader into Whitecross Street' (from Workers in the Dawn) and in the carnality and innate cruelty of The Nether World. But he soon fell out of love with what had started out as his romantic delusional social experiment in what working class life is like. By the winter of 1888, after he had finally said goodbye to Marianne aka Nell earlier in that year, and had begun his pilgrimage to Paris and Rome, George's ambition was firmly fixated on the writer's life of fame and affluence - and he would spend the rest of his life searching for that elusive thing called success. Hogarth went on racking up successes in the world of politics with a small 'p'. and in his development as an Artist. London celebrates his life with the wonder that is The Hogarth Roundabout - here, presented by political cartoonist for the Guardian, Martin Rowson
But this is how Hogarth's friend, the actor David Garrick, put it in his epitaph:
- Farewell great Painter of Mankind
- Who reach'd the noblest point of Art
- Whose pictur'd Morals charm the Mind
- And through the Eye correct the Heart.
- If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay,
- If Nature touch thee, drop a Tear:
- If neither move thee, turn away,
- For Hogarth's honour'd dust lies here.
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