Beautiful original engravings by William Hogarth including his most famous works such as Marriage a-la Mode, and A Rake's Progress.
As a graphic artist, Hogarth was extraordinarily successful and the prototype of the modern ‘Artist Printmaker’ was cast by his example. Within years his cussed outsider stance was adopted by a succession of brilliant satirists from Gillray to Cruikshank and Rowlandson while the paradigm of engraver as moral campaigner and ally to the pamphleteer was adopted with campaigning zeal by Goya in Spain and the publication of Los Caprichos in 1799. Hogarth’s legacy in the work of both Gillray and Goya has been explored in the gallery in recent years and the fact that engravings of his most famous works still illustrate history books and adorn the walls of pubs and dentist waiting rooms show how deeply he is embedded in his nation’s culture and its idea of itself.
It is high time therefore that we turn our attention to William Hogarth this January. And who better than this most pungent and pugnacious of artists to shake us from our slumbers at the start of a new year?