TAIL-PIECE
TO THE ARTISTS' CATALOGUE.
"Esse quid hoc dicam? vivis quod fama negatur!"[48]—Mart.
TAILPIECE TO ARTISTS' CATALOGUE
As a contrast to Britannia nurturing the trees that are introduced in the last print, a travelling monkey in full dress is in this industriously watering three withered and sapless stems of what might once have been flowering shrubs, and are inscribed "Exotics." These wretched remnants of things which were, are carefully placed in labelled flower-pots: on the first is written, "Obiit 1502;" on the second, "Obiit 1600;" and on the third, "Obiit 1606." Still adhering to the hieroglyphics in his frontispiece, Hogarth introduces these three dwarfish importations of decayed nature to indicate the state of those old and damaged pictures which are venerated merely for their antiquity, and exalted above all modern productions, from the name of a great master, rather than any intrinsic merit. To heighten the ridicule, he has given his monkey a magnifying glass that will draw forth hidden beauties, which to common optics are invisible.
So great was the demand for the catalogues with the illustrative prints of Hogarth, that the two first done were soon worn down, and Mr. Grignion was employed to engrave others from the same drawings. Beneath those that were first made there are no mottoes; and the word obiit is written obit. This was perhaps a mistake of either the painter or writing engraver, though I think it barely possible that the former might mean to pun on the connoisseurs being bubbled by dealers in old pictures—O! BIT.
The opinion Hogarth has, in the preceding pages, given of the taste and judgment of the public in his own day may at first sight seem rather harsh, but was in a degree justified by the scandalous inattention with which the town received his six inimitable pictures of "Marriage à la Mode;" they were, on the 6th of June 1750, sold by a kind of auction to Mr. Lane of Hillingdon for one hundred and twenty guineas! Being in Carlo Maratt frames that cost the artist four guineas each, his real remuneration for painting this admirable series was but a few shillings more than one hundred pounds.[49] Such are the rewards of genius. Low as this sum was, a Mr. Perry, being eleven months afterwards erroneously informed that still less had been the highest sum offered, and that they were not sold, wrote the following letter with an increased bidding. This gentleman's name is inserted in Hogarth's subscription book as a subscriber for four sets of "The Elections," with this remarkable memorandum:—"4th April 1754.—The whole eight guineas paid at the time of subscribing." Out of near six hundred names, I find only two (viz. Henry Raper, Esq., and Mr. Perry) who paid more than half the money in the first subscription.
To Mr. Hogarth.