William Hogarth: The First Modern Artist (Part 1)

James Fox (0:01)

Welcome to Stories of Art, I'm James Fox.

Alastair Sooke (0:04)

And I am Alastair Sooke.

James Fox (0:10)

A bruiser of a man, with a piggy nose, beefy jowls and a deep scar running across his sweaty forehead is eyeing us up. His name is William Hogarth, Billy to his friends, and he's clearly out to prove something. There's a palette, a pile of carefully chosen books, and to the right, Billy's beloved dog, a pug called, wait for it, Trump.

Hogarth painted this self-portrait in 1745, when he was in his mid to late forties and at the peak of his powers. Alastair, what does this picture tell us about the personality of this British bulldog of an artist?

Alastair Sooke (0:53)

I think it tells us a huge amount. I need to start by saying, when I look at this self-portrait, James, I don't necessarily see William Hogarth, I see Grant Mitchell.

I think it's worth explaining, perhaps to non-British listeners and viewers, that he was a famously macho, fictional character, a very big soap opera in Britain, EastEnders. Hogarth himself was an EastEnder.

Down at the bottom of this picture, there's a palette where it says, The Line of Beauty. To me, the caption should be, you want some? But that's kind of what you feel when you're looking.

He has that scar. He has a real sense thanks to the pug, because he joked a lot, didn't he? That he had a succession of pets, succession of pugs. This one we think probably was Trump, and he said that he looked a bit like his pugs. And people genuinely think that maybe there's a sort of pun going on here, that that pug is there to represent the fact that he is pugnacious, because famously he was a very combative person. He could really piss people off. I mean, his biographer, Jenny Uglow, talks about the fact that he could make people curious, and he really knew how to annoy people as well. But he has this reputation, as you say, for being super British, possibly not quite the Nigel Farage of British artists, we hope. But maybe leaning towards xenophobia at points. There is an irony here, which I'm sure we'll get into in the course of this two-part series about him, where actually in many ways he's quite close to continental artistic developments, and he takes a lot from European art and artists. But traditionally, he is seen as the father of the English school of painting. He really improves the status of English art. In fact, to the extent that he has given his name to an era, it's known as the Age of Hogarth thanks to all of those wonderful scenes often teeming with detail of low-life urban characters. He's a Londoner, his art is often about 18th century London, which itself is a fascinating historical phenomenon. Consequently, he's a great fun artist to think about. I was thinking on the way here, sort of adjectives you might associate with his art, things like rambunctious, boisterous. That is the classic way that people think about Hogarth, isn't it?

James Fox (3:18)

He is one of the biggest personalities in the history of art. As listeners to this podcast will know, there are a lot of big personalities in the history of art. But you're completely right, he is full of energy, full of aspiration. He's combative, as you say, he's arrogant, he's chippy, but he's also very loyal to his friends. He's got a fierce social conscience, he's very philanthropic, and he's just very, very funny.

I think there are listeners probably here are thinking, God, they're doing a whole series on an 18th century English engraver, what could be more boring? Well, I think they couldn't be more wrong.

He is a phenomenal artist, and I'm going to put my cards on the table here, Alastair, and say that I think there's a very strong case to be made, and I'll be making it actually throughout this series, that he is the first modern artist.

Alastair Sooke (4:01)

Yes.

James Fox (4:01)

I really think that.

Alastair Sooke (4:02)

Well, it is interesting that he is at a hinge moment in art history, particularly in this country, where, and it's worth just keeping this in mind as a sort of big picture shift, there is a move away from a real courtly aristocratic culture towards, there's this new thriving, I mean, London at this point has become, it's a metropolis. It's, I think, by the middle of the century, it's the biggest city in Europe. And you have this emergent bourgeois class really. And consequently, there's a lot of opportunity for canny people, entrepreneurial types like Hogarth, and fascinatingly, this picture that you've just described at the beginning, the history of it, you can actually see that in Microcosm, because he begins this self-portrait looking very different. He still looks like Grant Mitchell, but in the original image, there's a white cravat, there's a sort of 18th century wig. I think he's wearing some jacket, which is quite smart and formal, possibly with gold buttons. And in the 1740s, he changes it to this, where he's looking far more casual. And in a way, that suggests to me that shift from formality to an engagement with a more informal but also self-confident self-presentation as an artist, I think is very indicative.