Speaker 1: Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Frying and I'm tra C V. Wilson, and
Speaker 1: today we're gonna talk about an artist. But his story
Speaker 1: really involves so much more than art. It involves satire
Speaker 1: and social criticism, and it even gets into some legislation
Speaker 1: for artist rights. But one thing we should point out
Speaker 1: is that his satire and social criticism was being made
Speaker 1: in the early seventeen hundreds when the society he was
Speaker 1: criticizing was very different than ours. It was debuted in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. Yes, so there are a lot
Speaker 1: of things that are viewed very differently than we view them. Uh.
Speaker 1: There is discussion of of sex workers in this episode,
Speaker 1: not any details, but they come up in in some
Speaker 1: of his prints, as well as some violence, some drug use,
Speaker 1: things like that come up. So just be aware that
Speaker 1: that's that's in the hopper and that it will be
Speaker 1: again based on on the views of England in the
Speaker 1: seventeen thirties and forties and fifties. Well, and especially because
Speaker 1: our artwork for this one is a self portrait of
Speaker 1: the artist with his dog and it looks so sweet.
Speaker 1: It looks very sweet, and I was like, I could
Speaker 1: just see teachers saying, hey, this would be a great
Speaker 1: episode to share with the kids. Um, and it might
Speaker 1: be depending on the age of your kids, the kids
Speaker 1: you're thinking of that you would want. Still, I think
Speaker 1: to frame it and kind of listen first and decide
Speaker 1: based on the actual content. But we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about William Hogarth, who was an English artist that, as
Speaker 1: I said, uh, you know, his life story involves a
Speaker 1: lot more than just art. M William Hogarth was born
Speaker 1: to Richard Hogarth and Anne Gibbons in London, England, on
Speaker 1: November tenth seven. He did have some siblings, although the
Speaker 1: tally's on those siblings very wildly. Uh. Richard Hogarth, William's
Speaker 1: father was a teacher and a classical scholar, and while
Speaker 1: he did have patrons, the family still struggled financially. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hogarth's later in his life would talk about how his
Speaker 1: dad had really been treated very poorly and he ended
Speaker 1: up in deep debts. Some accounts say that his father
Speaker 1: went to debtors prison, but I couldn't find a solid
Speaker 1: verification on that, but that does kind of inform some
Speaker 1: of his work going forward, and despite being the child
Speaker 1: of an educator, though William was pretty disinterested in formal education.
Speaker 1: He was really smart and he was curious, but even
Speaker 1: from a young age, he was more inclined to draw
Speaker 1: than to study texts. But it seemed that his father
Speaker 1: was not exactly sure what to do to help William
Speaker 1: find a path in life that would suit his interests.
Speaker 1: He wasn't against him pursuing art, but he didn't really
Speaker 1: know what to do with it. So William ended up
Speaker 1: looking for an apprenticeship. And this is another time where
Speaker 1: I will say there are some accounts that suggests that
Speaker 1: his father was in debtors prison and he had to
Speaker 1: get the apprenticeship, and others that say that he just
Speaker 1: knew his dad was not going to be much help
Speaker 1: in in finding him a career path, so he went
Speaker 1: and found one himself. At fifteen, he became a silversmith's apprentice,
Speaker 1: and he learned engraving skills. But a master in this
Speaker 1: position might have hindered his development by giving him a
Speaker 1: mediocre instruction, and Hogarth, once again, frustrated that his mentors
Speaker 1: guidance was really lacking, opted to seek out information about
Speaker 1: the trade on his own, so he was augmenting this
Speaker 1: kind of weak training that he was getting with self
Speaker 1: guided study, and during his apprenticeship, Hogarth studied the world
Speaker 1: around him as much as his trade. He was definitely
Speaker 1: a fan of all of the various entertainments offered by
Speaker 1: early eighteenth century London, from theaters to body houses to
Speaker 1: coffee houses where intellectuals gathered. He sort of was one
Speaker 1: of those people I always think of as like a
Speaker 1: student of life. He just wanted to go around and
Speaker 1: see people doing all the things that people do and
Speaker 1: learn from that. When Hogarth was twenty three, he opened
Speaker 1: his own shop. In that same year he started taking
Speaker 1: formal drawing classes, but the normal curriculum for drawing lessons,
Speaker 1: which was sketching live models or prepared tableau and attempting
Speaker 1: to replicate other artists work, had the same effect on
Speaker 1: Hogarth as this early attempts at his education had. He
Speaker 1: was not interested. He found it frustrating and limiting, and
Speaker 1: he had turned to drawing school to expand the possibilities
Speaker 1: of his engraving work, but he didn't think the classes
Speaker 1: were actually going to help him achieve that goal, and
Speaker 1: so he opted once again to rely on himself for
Speaker 1: his education, and he began to train his observational skills
Speaker 1: because he wanted to be able to draw real life
Speaker 1: subjects from memory. So he developed his own improvisational style
Speaker 1: over time, and simultaneously he was supporting himself through his
Speaker 1: regular engraving work. That work included projects like book illustration,
Speaker 1: so he was getting some practical experience in commercial art,
Speaker 1: but this was not particularly fulfilling. He would later say
Speaker 1: that the work quote did a little more than maintain
Speaker 1: myself and the usual gaieties of life, but wasn't all
Speaker 1: a punctual paymaster. And it wasn't long though, before he
Speaker 1: found himself attracted once again to drawing school. But this
Speaker 1: time it was a little different. It was a school
Speaker 1: housed in the home of Sir James Thornhill. Thornhill was
Speaker 1: an accomplished artist. He had been the official history painter
Speaker 1: in the courts of George the First and George the Second,
Speaker 1: and he had been knighted in seventy He was also
Speaker 1: a member of Parliament. He painted in the Italian Baroque style,
Speaker 1: and Hogarth was a fan of his work, and part
Speaker 1: of the appeal of studying under Thornhill was the fact
Speaker 1: that Thornhill had achieved a level of social standing that
Speaker 1: was unusual for an artist. He wasn't toiling penniless at
Speaker 1: the whim of a patron, although he was at odds
Speaker 1: with the neo classical revival that was underway at the time,
Speaker 1: and in f are to gain favor with Thornhill and
Speaker 1: make clear that he felt they were of the same
Speaker 1: mindset regarding art, Hogarth even published an engraving at the
Speaker 1: time titled Masquerades and Operas, which was a criticism of
Speaker 1: the trends to embrace foreign art above the art that
Speaker 1: was actually created in England. The engraving features, among other things,
Speaker 1: a fool and a devil leading a crowd into the
Speaker 1: theater to see the latest popular entertainment, while a woman
Speaker 1: with a wheelbarrow carries away all the writings of Congreve, Drieden, Otway,
Speaker 1: Shakespeare and Addison, and below the image is the following inscription.
Speaker 1: Could new dumb faustus to reform the age conjure up
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's or Ben Johnson's ghosts? They'd blush for shame to
Speaker 1: see the English stage debauched by fooleryes at so great
Speaker 1: a cost. What would their main say? Should they behold
Speaker 1: Monsters and masquerades, where useful plays adorned, the fruitful theater
Speaker 1: of old and rival wits contended for the base. A
Speaker 1: copy of disengraving, which is known as The Bad Taste
Speaker 1: of the Town, was in the British Museum's collection and
Speaker 1: while it's not on display, it is digitized and available
Speaker 1: online and we will be linked in our show notes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like with all of Hogarth's work, we should
Speaker 1: I mention that it's worth going and looking at it
Speaker 1: for yourself because we can describe it, and we will
Speaker 1: for a couple of them describe them. But uh, they're
Speaker 1: very busy. There is a lot going on in every
Speaker 1: single picture. Uh. And that's part of his social commentary
Speaker 1: that he includes things. And it's kind of like you
Speaker 1: will never fully grasp all of the sort of intensity
Speaker 1: of these these very very detailed pieces until you actually
Speaker 1: see them for yourself. So I encourage you to good
Speaker 1: look for them. Uh. And publishing Masquerades and Operas had
Speaker 1: long term ramifications for Hogarth's life and career. So the
Speaker 1: criticism of England's contemporary art and culture scene and the
Speaker 1: connoisseurs in it, of course earned him a number of enemies,
Speaker 1: and most prominent among them was the architect Richard Boyle,
Speaker 1: who was the third Earl of Burlington. He and others
Speaker 1: would kind of have this rivalry with uh Hogarth for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life, and it was not the
Speaker 1: first time in his early career that he would butt
Speaker 1: heads with art patrons. After several years of study with Thornhill,
Speaker 1: Hogarth believed he had learned enough that he should begin
Speaker 1: a painting career in Earnest. One of his first patrons
Speaker 1: was a tapestry maker named Joshua Morris, who had requested
Speaker 1: a painting from Hogarth, and when Hogarth delivered the art,
Speaker 1: Morris refused to accept it, claiming that Hogarth had not
Speaker 1: finished it and that it was apparent that the artist
Speaker 1: was really an engraver and not a professional painter. William
Speaker 1: Hogarth then sued Morris for his money and brought a
Speaker 1: number of expert witnesses to the trial, including Thornhill, to
Speaker 1: a test that yes, the work involved was a complete
Speaker 1: painting and that Hogarth should be paid the money that
Speaker 1: he was owed. The court found in Hogarth's favor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is a time when artists were not
Speaker 1: so willing to really like pursue legal action when someone said, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want that painting after all, but he did.
Speaker 1: That will come up again in a little bit that
Speaker 1: he's willing to take legal action for his rightful money.
Speaker 1: Also in seventy eight, Hogarth painted his first dated painting.
Speaker 1: Up to this point he had produced some plates and
Speaker 1: other things, but they didn't have dates on them. And
Speaker 1: this is The Beggar's Opera. And it was a recreation
Speaker 1: of a scene from a current production of the farctical play.
Speaker 1: And it was an example of just how well he
Speaker 1: had trained his memory to recall detail, because apparently, according
Speaker 1: to many people, he basically perfectly recreated the scene as
Speaker 1: it had played on the stage, even though he had
Speaker 1: of course gone away and painted it later. He actually
Speaker 1: ended up painting five different versions of the scene. In
Speaker 1: seventeen twenty nine, Hogarth and thorn Hill's relationship took on
Speaker 1: a new dimension. William became Thornhill's son in law when
Speaker 1: he and Jane Thornhill eloped. And in his early career
Speaker 1: Hogarth became known for paintings known as conversation pieces, and
Speaker 1: these were portraits of small groups of people depicting them
Speaker 1: in a casual, informal moment, like they're having a light conversation.
Speaker 1: And these also tended to be physically small paintings. And
Speaker 1: as Hogarth's conversation pieces became popular, they did afford him
Speaker 1: a degree of financial success, but he also started to
Speaker 1: find them really boring to work on, and this was
Speaker 1: in part because each individual piece didn't really bring in
Speaker 1: all that much money. He was a very quick worker,
Speaker 1: but he had to basically keep cranking them out at
Speaker 1: a rapid pace to keep money coming in. But even
Speaker 1: as he continued speedily cranking out these conversation pieces, he
Speaker 1: also worked on other projects for which he had greater enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: And these pieces were humorous, realistic scenes, and like masquerades
Speaker 1: and operas, these works often skewered social trends and preached morality.
Speaker 1: If they had been published as sequential art on a page,
Speaker 1: they would look very similar to comics and style, but
Speaker 1: they came out as full size prints, each one taking
Speaker 1: up an entire page of its own. And this was
Speaker 1: where he truly hit his stride as an artist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really what made him famous, uh, and what
Speaker 1: continues to make him sort of an important figure in
Speaker 1: the art world, and he was very savvy about the
Speaker 1: success that started to come with it, so much so
Speaker 1: that it did, as I mentioned earlierly, to some legislation.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about all of that in just
Speaker 1: a moment, but first we will pause and have a
Speaker 1: little sponsor break. Whereas Hogarth's conversation pieces offered him financial stability,
Speaker 1: his moral satires brought in a great deal more money,
Speaker 1: so much so that he reached a point where he
Speaker 1: really had financial independence. He could work on the things
Speaker 1: that he chose to do, rather than depending on commissions
Speaker 1: or patronage to meet his ongoing financial needs. As prints
Speaker 1: of Hogarth's engravings were made to sell to a wider audience,
Speaker 1: he was aware of the risk that copycats could plagiarize
Speaker 1: his work, and that is because that had happened to him.
Speaker 1: He published a very popular series called A Harlot's Progress
Speaker 1: in seventeen thirty three, and the six paintings, which were
Speaker 1: then adapted into plates that made up A Harlot's Progress
Speaker 1: were produced at a time when the topic of prostitution
Speaker 1: and sex workers were the focus of a lot of
Speaker 1: attention in London in the late seventeen twenties and early
Speaker 1: seventeen thirties, there was this effort on the part of
Speaker 1: city officials to bring morality back to London streets by
Speaker 1: working to eliminate or at least reduce the obvious appearance
Speaker 1: of prostitution. But out of the initial vilification of women
Speaker 1: that this sort of charge started, there was this secondary
Speaker 1: wave of characterization of women's sex workers that made them
Speaker 1: seem more like innocence who had been trapped by corruptors.
Speaker 1: And this was a debate that was going on in
Speaker 1: papers throughout London at the time, and Hogarth's engraving told
Speaker 1: a tale along the lines of that second characterization of
Speaker 1: an innocent who falls into this life through no desire
Speaker 1: of her own to pursue it. In the first plate,
Speaker 1: an innocent young woman named Mall hack About arrives in
Speaker 1: the city from the country, thinking she'll make her way
Speaker 1: in a trade such as dressmaking, but she's intercepted by
Speaker 1: a brothel keeper named Mother Needham, who has shown assessing
Speaker 1: Mall's attributes. And a second plate, Mall has become a
Speaker 1: kept mistress living in luxury, but then she's caught cheating
Speaker 1: on her keeper, and by the third plate, Mall has
Speaker 1: been cast out by that keeper and has become a
Speaker 1: prostitute on the street. Uh and in plate four she
Speaker 1: has been imprisoned for that. In plate five she is
Speaker 1: once again a free woman, but at this point she
Speaker 1: has an illegitimate child and she is dying from a
Speaker 1: sexually transmitted disease. Plate six is Mall's funeral, attended by
Speaker 1: women who also work in the sex trade, and men
Speaker 1: who appear to be more interested in taking advantage of
Speaker 1: those women than in mourning the dead person before them Mall.
Speaker 1: Even the parson in that final plate has his hand
Speaker 1: in the skirt of one of the other mourners. Because
Speaker 1: of the popularity of a Harlot's progress, fake copies were
Speaker 1: produced all over London by CD printers hoping to cash
Speaker 1: in on Hogarth's work, and naturally the artist was incensed
Speaker 1: so much so that he took legal action. So, of course,
Speaker 1: it was not really feasible to chase down all of
Speaker 1: the various printers who had been making unlicensed copies of
Speaker 1: these popular plates. So William Hogarth, along with several other artists,
Speaker 1: went to Parliament and they made a case that their
Speaker 1: work should be legally protected. And after hearing the artists case,
Speaker 1: a piece of legislation called the Engravers Act was introduced
Speaker 1: in seventeen thirty four with language that would protect engravings
Speaker 1: that featured original designs, and it was signed into law
Speaker 1: on June seventeen thirty five, and it became known by
Speaker 1: the nickname Hogarth's Act. You'll sometimes also see it written
Speaker 1: as Hogarth's Law. While the Engravers Act was in legislation
Speaker 1: but not yet assigned law, William Hogarth actually had another
Speaker 1: series that he was ready to publish, but he was
Speaker 1: not willing to do so until there were legal protections
Speaker 1: in place to prevent pirated copies from circulating. And in
Speaker 1: the meantime, Hogarth's mentor and father in law, Thornhill, died
Speaker 1: in seventeen thirty four, and after the loss, Hogarth decided
Speaker 1: that he would reopen Thornhill's drawing school, which had never
Speaker 1: been a particularly successful venture. Hogarth's version became much more
Speaker 1: of a salon where artists shared ideas and discussed their work.
Speaker 1: Once the Engravers Act was law, Hogarth released the series
Speaker 1: he had been withholding, titled A Rake's Progress. The series,
Speaker 1: like A Harlot's Progress, was painted an oil first and
Speaker 1: then adapted as a set of print engravings. The Rake
Speaker 1: in this narrative is Tom Rakewell, a young man of leisure.
Speaker 1: In the first scene, young Tom has freshly come into
Speaker 1: his fortune as his wealthy and apparently miserly father has died. Tom,
Speaker 1: wasting no time spending his new found money, is being
Speaker 1: fitted for a fancy new suit while simultaneously paying off
Speaker 1: a paramore who appears to be pregnant and heartbroken. She
Speaker 1: will appear in later plates as well. In scene too,
Speaker 1: Tom is surrounded in his home by an assortment of people,
Speaker 1: all vying for his attention in his financial favor. By
Speaker 1: the time the viewer sees Tom and the third scene,
Speaker 1: he has fully descended into a life of debauchery. He's
Speaker 1: in a brothel taking part in an orgy. And this
Speaker 1: is a good time to mention that in Hogarth's works
Speaker 1: on morality, even though sexual situations are conveyed, there's no nudity,
Speaker 1: but there is the suggestion of it. So to modern eye,
Speaker 1: the plate three looks like a wild party. It might
Speaker 1: take a moment for the viewer to actually register exactly
Speaker 1: what is going on. Yeah, he's you know, he is
Speaker 1: taking part in this big thing, but it's not overtly portrayed.
Speaker 1: I mean, once you start seeing the clues and you realize, like, oh,
Speaker 1: people's hands are in each other's clothes and stuff, but
Speaker 1: it's not quite so graphic as you might be envisioning.
Speaker 1: And in the fourth scene, Tom is about to be
Speaker 1: arrested for the debts that he's accrued in his debaucherous lifestyle,
Speaker 1: when that same young woman from the first plate that
Speaker 1: he bought off steps in and she pays the bail
Speaker 1: of all of her money so that she can save him.
Speaker 1: And in the fifth scene, Tom is getting married, but
Speaker 1: not to that kind young woman who saved him though
Speaker 1: he had wronged her, but instead to an elderly heiress
Speaker 1: in the hopes of regaining a fortune in the match.
Speaker 1: The sixth image is a seed scene. Tom is anna
Speaker 1: gambling den. The room is on fire, but neither Tom
Speaker 1: nor the other gambler's notice because they are so absorbed
Speaker 1: in the fortunes that they stand to gain or lose.
Speaker 1: Tom appears to be pleading to God for assistance in
Speaker 1: his bet, and Tom is pictured in debtor's prison in
Speaker 1: the seventh image in the series, he has written a
Speaker 1: play in the hopes of selling it. To make some money.
Speaker 1: It's kind of sitting to the side, and his wife
Speaker 1: is pictured, that same woman that he married for her money,
Speaker 1: but at this point she has gaunt and clearly not
Speaker 1: the wealthy woman she once was. And the final scene
Speaker 1: shows Tom in the Bethlehem Royal Hospital known colloquially as Bedlam,
Speaker 1: where the insane and impoverished of London were sent, and
Speaker 1: he is naked at this point save for a rag
Speaker 1: a cloth that straped over him, and a wealthy woman
Speaker 1: who has come to see the spectacle of Bedlam, looks on.
Speaker 1: She has paid for admission to come and sort of
Speaker 1: observe the lower creatures in this horrible condition. This particular
Speaker 1: series was popular when it first appeared, and it's remained
Speaker 1: so in the centuries since. In nineteen thirty five, the
Speaker 1: story of Tom Rakewell was adapted into a ballet, became
Speaker 1: a film in nineteen forty five, and an opera by
Speaker 1: Igor Stravinsky in nineteen fifty one. The original painting series
Speaker 1: of A Rake's Progress was purchased at auction in eighteen
Speaker 1: o two by the wife architect Sir john Soon. Today
Speaker 1: they are part of the Sir Johnson Museum collection. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the original paintings for A Harlot's Progress were lost in
Speaker 1: a fire in seventeen fifty five. Yeah, and A Rake's Progress.
Speaker 1: There have been even more modern adaptations and other works
Speaker 1: inspired by it, but those are the sort of the
Speaker 1: key points were. In the more modern age, it suddenly
Speaker 1: had this resurgence of interest, and both of these series
Speaker 1: of works, as well as others that he worked on
Speaker 1: during the seventeen thirties and seventeen forties and some in
Speaker 1: the seventies fifties, are filled with these details like I
Speaker 1: mentioned before, that add to the story and in some
Speaker 1: cases they make direct social or political commentary. In some
Speaker 1: cases he'll have pieces of art on the walls in
Speaker 1: the backgrounds that have meaning. And uh. Some of the
Speaker 1: people that are depicted as supporting characters in these works
Speaker 1: were actually well known figures of London at the time.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they are cast in roles that make it clear
Speaker 1: that William Hogarth did not think very highly of them.
Speaker 1: Not long after the release of Our Rake's Progress, Hogarth
Speaker 1: was elected as one of the governors of Britain's oldest hospital,
Speaker 1: Saint Bartholomew's. He contributed to the decor of the facility
Speaker 1: by painting two large pieces for the main staircase, which
Speaker 1: were the historical paintings Pool of Bethesda and the Good Samaritan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that hospital was founded, I believe in the eleven hundreds. Uh,
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about the unique legacy of
Speaker 1: those two paintings there. But first we're gonna pause for
Speaker 1: a word from one of our fans answers. Those paintings
Speaker 1: in St. Bartholomew's, which are often mistaken for murals because
Speaker 1: they take up whole walls, but they are in fact canvases,
Speaker 1: are still in the hospital today and they have taken
Speaker 1: on sort of a unique role. In addition to acting
Speaker 1: as massive decor, the figures in those paintings are seven
Speaker 1: feet tall, so extrapolate from that how big like full
Speaker 1: scenes featuring people that size would be. They are also
Speaker 1: used in a really kind of interesting way as teaching tools.
Speaker 1: It's believed that Hogarth used patients from the hospital as
Speaker 1: his models for the paintings, and he captured their illnesses
Speaker 1: pretty accurately and without exaggeration, and as such, the characters
Speaker 1: in the paintings are sometimes introduced as topics of diagnosis
Speaker 1: discussion with medical students. Hogarth subjects display conditions which could
Speaker 1: be my atonia, congenita and ricketts and syphilis and gout,
Speaker 1: among others, and so it's kind of an interesting way
Speaker 1: to um test and develop observational skills, which I think
Speaker 1: is just sort of fantastic to go, hey, what do
Speaker 1: you think this person in the painting has. While these
Speaker 1: two large scale historical paintings are not considered to be
Speaker 1: Hogarth's best work, they are an important part of the
Speaker 1: hospital's history Because they are in an active space, they
Speaker 1: need constant upkeep, and his lifetime Hogarth covered the expenses
Speaker 1: to do so himself. He also requested that the two
Speaker 1: paintings never be varnished, though at some point that request
Speaker 1: was disregarded repeatedly. During a cleaning of the paintings in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven, layers of varnished were carefully removed, and
Speaker 1: after his work on the st Bartholemew's Staircase project was complete,
Speaker 1: Hogarth turned to more traditional portraiture, and one of his
Speaker 1: first portraits in this period was a painting of philanthropist
Speaker 1: Thomas Coorum, which he displayed at an orphan's hospital that
Speaker 1: Coream had founded, and he also convinced other artists to
Speaker 1: donate their work to the hospital when it was completed
Speaker 1: in seventeen. His famous self portrait A Painter and his
Speaker 1: Pug was created in seventeen forty five, and that same
Speaker 1: year he released another series called Marriage a la Mode
Speaker 1: and the exhibition description of Hogarth's work at the Tape
Speaker 1: Museum in two thousand and seven, it was described as follows.
Speaker 1: The satirical thrust of Marriage Alla Moode is as much
Speaker 1: about patronage, aesthetics, and taste as it is about marriage
Speaker 1: and morals. Over and above the title itself, Marriage alla
Speaker 1: Moode includes Italian and Dutch old masters, French portraiture and furnishings,
Speaker 1: Oriental decorative arts, an Italian castrato singer and a French
Speaker 1: dancing master, a turbaned black page boy, a masquerade reference,
Speaker 1: a bango and an aristocratic toilet. And even syphilis which
Speaker 1: Lord Squanderfield probably contracted abroad and was popularly known as
Speaker 1: the French pox. Thus his emasculated and diseased body is
Speaker 1: additionally emblematic of the spread of quote foreign culture that
Speaker 1: has infected and weakened British identity, society and commerce. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to include that because they so perfectly kind
Speaker 1: of encapsulated in that one paragraph a lot of the
Speaker 1: way that his his art worked in terms of how
Speaker 1: it would take people down with these little subtle clues
Speaker 1: about uh and not so subtle clues about what was
Speaker 1: going on in the picture and the people involved. So
Speaker 1: the story of marriage a la mode is that of
Speaker 1: an arranged marriage which leads to a life of idle
Speaker 1: distance between the couple involved and extramarital indulgences, both in
Speaker 1: terms of affairs and just debaucherous behavior otherwise, including drug use.
Speaker 1: So for Hogarth, who married for love and really seemed
Speaker 1: to have had a happy match with Jane Thornhill, marriage
Speaker 1: is arranged for financial benefits seemed to both ludicrous and doomed.
Speaker 1: The late seventeen forties and early seventeen fifties saw a
Speaker 1: shift and Hogart's worth back to prince, but they were
Speaker 1: more basic images intended for mass market sales. He didn't
Speaker 1: start with paintings for those prints, but from drawings. One
Speaker 1: of these series, titled The Four Stages of Cruelty, is
Speaker 1: a commentary on how unkind children can easily become violent adults.
Speaker 1: It depicts animal abuse in the first plate, and then
Speaker 1: the main character, Tom Nero, becomes progressively more a monster,
Speaker 1: culminating in m. A. Cobb final scene in which the
Speaker 1: hanged Tom is being dissected for an anatomy lesson in
Speaker 1: the surgery. Yeah, that was one I will confess. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are debaucherous and sometimes unpleasant images in all of
Speaker 1: his work. That series, really I found quite troubling. The
Speaker 1: animal abuse is really graphic. And then the things that
Speaker 1: sort of happened as this character becomes more and more
Speaker 1: of a lost person and a violent person are really
Speaker 1: a little effect surprisingly affecting to me for plates. Um,
Speaker 1: So if you go looking, just know that that's the case.
Speaker 1: At the same time that he was working on these
Speaker 1: simple morality prints, ho Garth was also painting, but he
Speaker 1: had reached this point where he was starting to struggle
Speaker 1: to finish any of his canvases. Yeah. Really staged two
Speaker 1: auctions of his work between seventeen forty five and seventeen
Speaker 1: fifty one, but these led to both frustration and embarrassment
Speaker 1: because they did not generate enough interest to really bring
Speaker 1: in much money. In seventeen fifty three, William Hogarth published
Speaker 1: a book titled The Analysis of Beauty, in which he
Speaker 1: laid out his principles of beauty and focused on the
Speaker 1: import of what he called the line of beauty, an
Speaker 1: s shaped curve that's inherently appealing and exciting to the
Speaker 1: human eye. The book met with mixed reviews and was
Speaker 1: mocked by his detractors. Yeah, as we mentioned earlier, early
Speaker 1: in his career he made enemies and they stayed that
Speaker 1: way for the rest of his life. In seventeen fifty four,
Speaker 1: Hogarth produced another satirical series. This was known as the
Speaker 1: Election Series, which is a critique of electoral corruptions as
Speaker 1: told through a narrative detailing of political race in a
Speaker 1: fictional town called guzzle Down. And this series, which once
Speaker 1: again began his oil paintings and then was made into etchings,
Speaker 1: so he had had gone back to that he had
Speaker 1: started doing the quicker drawings into etchings version skewered both
Speaker 1: the Tories and the Whigs for bribery and corrupt practices,
Speaker 1: and the first painting in the series actually went on
Speaker 1: display several days before the general election that year, at
Speaker 1: a time when election corruption was being discussed in every
Speaker 1: paper in London and seventeen fifty seven Hogarth became sergeant
Speaker 1: painter to King George the Third, but despite this prestigious
Speaker 1: and well paying position, his later years were really marked
Speaker 1: with disappointment. In seventeen fifty nine he painted Sigismunda Morning
Speaker 1: over the Heart of Giscardo, which features the titles heroin
Speaker 1: holding a goblet containing the heart of her husband murdered
Speaker 1: by her father. The criticism of the work was severe
Speaker 1: and Hogarth did not paint much after that. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are some write ups of that piece saying that he
Speaker 1: was trying to prove that English painters could produce work
Speaker 1: exactly as good as the Italian masters, and that the
Speaker 1: the reception was more of like a m hmm, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. Uh. It did not go well, and
Speaker 1: he did make one other political statement with his anti
Speaker 1: war print series titled The Times, which he did after that,
Speaker 1: which made a rather unpopular statement in coming out against
Speaker 1: the Seven Years War. And at the time that that
Speaker 1: series was published, the war had not yet ended, so
Speaker 1: it was like in year six and did not have
Speaker 1: the name the Seven Years War. Yet people were outraged
Speaker 1: by this particular work, and politicians who supported the war
Speaker 1: vocally and publicly criticized Hogarth, and it only served to
Speaker 1: dampen his interest in his work. Hogarth's last artistic endeavor
Speaker 1: was an etching titled The Bathos or Manner of Sinking,
Speaker 1: which was published in March of seventeen sixty four. It's
Speaker 1: often described as having an air of doom in it,
Speaker 1: and it time is depicted as a winged figure, broken
Speaker 1: and lying prone amid an assortment of debris, a puff
Speaker 1: of air escaping his lips, with the word Pheni printed
Speaker 1: on it. The image was intended to be the tailpiece
Speaker 1: rebound collections of his work, and when considered in that context,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit less ominous. Yeah, it definitely looks
Speaker 1: like a death and destruction kind of image, but when
Speaker 1: you consider that it would be the end paper of
Speaker 1: a book where they're saying the book has ended, it
Speaker 1: seems a little less upsetting. But people will sometimes hint
Speaker 1: that it it was maybe important of his upcoming death.
Speaker 1: Uh So, a few months after The Bethos was created,
Speaker 1: in the summer of seventeen sixty four, William Hogarth had
Speaker 1: a seizure and he remained quite ill from that point
Speaker 1: until his death on October seventeen sixty four, and he
Speaker 1: was sixty seven at that point and had been working
Speaker 1: as an engraver and artist for more than four decades. Today,
Speaker 1: not only can you find Hogarth's works and museums around
Speaker 1: the world, but you can also visit the house he
Speaker 1: lived in from seventeen forty nine until his death. It's
Speaker 1: now a museum and we will link to information about
Speaker 1: it in the show notes. Yeah, William Hogarth, He's fascinating creature.
Speaker 1: He's one of those artists. Like usually I will wax
Speaker 1: rapsodic about artists and kind of fall in love with them.
Speaker 1: And I was telling Tracy before this, I don't know
Speaker 1: how I feel about him, Like if I think he
Speaker 1: would be a delightful fun person or if he might
Speaker 1: be a crabby stick in the mud, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: But some of his work is really lovely. Yes, so
Speaker 1: most art historians and critics will say, like, if you
Speaker 1: look at his his satire pieces, because of their composition
Speaker 1: and what he included and how um sort of rich
Speaker 1: unless they were, those are are warranted as the things
Speaker 1: that make him famous. But if you just compare like
Speaker 1: his straight paintings to other painters at the time, he's fine,
Speaker 1: but not not particularly a big standout, And you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be like, Wow, he was really amazing. Yeah, I saw
Speaker 1: some really interesting things that were about him trying to
Speaker 1: make it acceptable for anything to be the subject of
Speaker 1: art instead of just appropriate things being a subject of art. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that a lot of that came from that sort of
Speaker 1: bucking against the the established art society in the early
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds. That he thought like, that's foolish. Nobody should
Speaker 1: control what should be art and what shouldn't be art
Speaker 1: and what's valid art and what is it, which I
Speaker 1: completely get behind. Uh, But yeah, he's he's an interesting chap.
Speaker 1: I have sort of a multilayered listener mail because I
Speaker 1: have three in front of me, but they're all kind
Speaker 1: of similar and related, but I wanted to call them
Speaker 1: all out and mentioned them. They're all related to our
Speaker 1: episode on veterinary medicine, because fortunately we have listeners who
Speaker 1: are smart and no things and can add to that.
Speaker 1: I will read the one from Allison, who says, Dear
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy. Last week, I sat down at my
Speaker 1: desk at the end of a twelve hour work day
Speaker 1: to type up medical notes from my evening appointments and
Speaker 1: nearly cried when I saw the topic of the podcast
Speaker 1: was a brief history of veterinary medicine. I'm a veterinarian
Speaker 1: who practices both Western and traditional Chinese veterinary medicine, so
Speaker 1: your podcast touched on so many aspects of my career,
Speaker 1: and after a long day of work, it was a
Speaker 1: welcome reminder of my profession's rich history, of which I'm
Speaker 1: proud to be a part of. And she mentioned that
Speaker 1: she wanted to make a tiny correction about the episode.
Speaker 1: At one point, you were discussing blood letting as a
Speaker 1: treatment for excess blood, and Holly, you joked that you
Speaker 1: can't have too much blood. Fun fact, while we no
Speaker 1: longer recognize that as a common medical ailment, there actually
Speaker 1: is a relatively uncommon condition of excess blood called poly
Speaker 1: psythemia uh poly meaning many size meaning cells and emia
Speaker 1: meaning related to the blood. Polysythemia can have several causes. Generally,
Speaker 1: it is caused by bone marrow cancer, leading to overproduction
Speaker 1: of blood cells that are then released into the blood
Speaker 1: stream faster than normal. This more in than out process
Speaker 1: leads to excess blood cells. Another reason for a patient
Speaker 1: to develop polycythemia would be chronic hypoxia or lack of
Speaker 1: oxygen delivered to the tissues, and the body will over
Speaker 1: time respond to a chronic lack of oxygen by producing
Speaker 1: more red blood cells, whose job it is to carry
Speaker 1: oxygen from the lungs to the tissues. Uh So she
Speaker 1: thankfully added that little bit to teach us more about
Speaker 1: veterinary medicine. I believe that is also a thing that
Speaker 1: can happen in humans and not just animals. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: definitely various blood disorders that can involve too much of
Speaker 1: various blood cells. Yeah, but I did say in that episode,
Speaker 1: you can't have too much blood, like that was a
Speaker 1: crazy idea. Well, and it also reminds me of I
Speaker 1: don't even remember when this was so long ago. We
Speaker 1: at some point mentioned the non non medical practice of trepidation,
Speaker 1: where they would drill holes in people's skulls um and
Speaker 1: how like there's no basis to that at all, And
Speaker 1: people wrote in to say, well, but if you're if
Speaker 1: you're needing to relieve too much pressure on people's brain,
Speaker 1: we do drill a hole in their skull. And I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, but that that's not trepenation though, like
Speaker 1: that's the medical procedure, right. Trepidation is a different thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we also had both Megan and Aaron wrote
Speaker 1: to us, both of them also involved in veterinary medicine,
Speaker 1: and they mentioned too that one of the things we
Speaker 1: talked about briefly was how it was twelve thousand dollars
Speaker 1: I think in Germany in nine to get a veterinary degree,
Speaker 1: and how that was an exorbitant amount of the time.
Speaker 1: Of course, it continues to be exorbitant to go to
Speaker 1: medical school. Both of them cited figures that are well
Speaker 1: into the six figures. I have such immense respect for veterinarians.
Speaker 1: I love my veterinarian desperately. She's amazing. We've been together
Speaker 1: for more than a decade thirteen years, I think, man,
Speaker 1: which she's like family to me practically, uh, and has
Speaker 1: foolishly given me her private number, which she probably regrets
Speaker 1: because I will text her with things. But we've gotten
Speaker 1: so much great feedback from veterinarians and vet text and
Speaker 1: I just wanted to thank them all for sharing info
Speaker 1: with us, and and they all share such complete passion
Speaker 1: for their work and the life saving stuff that they do,
Speaker 1: and the incredible breadth of knowledge that they have to have.
Speaker 1: So I think every ternary and if I did not
Speaker 1: make that completely clear. There was a brief period in
Speaker 1: my life where after I had been working in a
Speaker 1: secondary education library for over a decade, I thought maybe
Speaker 1: I want to go into animal care, and then I didn't.
Speaker 1: Then went into broadcasting instant, which I know is bizarre,
Speaker 1: but it's because I do not have the wherewithal to
Speaker 1: hack that job. It's very very stressful. Um, no matter
Speaker 1: what level you're at, it's very very stressful. So thank
Speaker 1: you to all of the veterinarians and texts that have
Speaker 1: written us. I appreciate the work you do. Uh if
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us, you can do
Speaker 1: so at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us across the spectrum of social
Speaker 1: media as missed in History. You can also come to
Speaker 1: our website to find us, which is missed in history
Speaker 1: dot com, where there are show notes for every episode
Speaker 1: that Tracy and I have worked on. Now those are
Speaker 1: incorporated right into the show page. There's not a separate
Speaker 1: show note page. You can also find every episode of
Speaker 1: the show ever from its inception, way before Tracy and
Speaker 1: I were ever involved, And if you would like to
Speaker 1: learn more, you can go to our parents, which is
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Type in almost anything you
Speaker 1: want about art, or veterinary sciences, or almost any other
Speaker 1: topic in the search bar, and you're going to get
Speaker 1: a wealth of information to delight and entertain and inform you.
Speaker 1: So please come and visit us at missed in history
Speaker 1: dot com and how stuff works dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how staff
Speaker 1: works dot com.