[IV]
WHO WAS WILLIAM KENT?
Who was William Kent? What is the record of the plump, self-satisfied dandy whose likeness may be seen at the National Portrait Gallery?
PLATE V.—MARRIAGE À LA MODE
(In the National Gallery, London)
Scene II. of this matchless series, the finest pictorial satire of the century. It is called “Shortly after Marriage.” We are in the peer’s breakfast-room. The clock marks twenty minutes after twelve in the morning, the candles beneath the portraits of the four saints in the inner room are guttering, a dog sniffs at a lady’s cap protruding from the husband’s pocket, and the book peeping from the coat of the old steward is called “Regeneration.” Hogarth never stayed his hand. The details are innumerable, amusing, italicised. What could be more exquisite than the characterisation of the lady, her pretty, dissolute, provocative face, and the abandon of the peer, too bored and tired, after his night’s debauch, even to think of remorse. This “pictur’d moral” series, containing six scenes, was painted by Hogarth in 1745, and was purchased by Mr. Lane of Hillingdon in 1751 for £126.
Do you like this ruddy round-faced man with the eloquent eye, the double chin, and the thick lips? His clothes are certainly attractive—the red velvet turban and the fawn-coloured jacket open at the front showing the frilled shirt. Bartholomew Dandridge, that “eminent face painter,” painted this portrait.
Yes; this is a striking presentment of William Kent, 1684-1748, who had many friends and many enemies. Among the enemies was William Hogarth, who hated Kent.
When you visit the National Portrait Gallery, turn your gaze slightly to the left, and you will see the representation of Hogarth at his easel, painted by himself. What would Hogarth say if he could know that the portrait of his old enemy now hangs near his? Perhaps he would smile a welcome, for anger is subdued by Death the Reconciler.
I return to the question: “Who was William Kent?” The legend beneath his portrait says: “Painter, sculptor, architect, and landscape gardener.” He was all these and much more—decorator, designer of furniture, man milliner, arbiter of taste, and general adviser on art and decoration to the fashionable world. Indeed, the name of William Kent flings wide the doors of the eighteenth century, which lives in all its crowded unattractiveness in Hogarth’s unapproachable pictur’d morals.