Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth, With a Catalogue of His Works

by John Nichols

One of the best portraits Hogarth ever painted, is at Lichfield. It is of a gentleman with whom he was very intimate, and at whose houses at Mortlake and in Ironmongers-Lane he spent much of his time—Mr. Joseph Porter, of London, merchant, who died April 7, 1749. Mrs. Porter the sister of this gentleman (who was daughter of Dr. Johnson's wife by a former husband) is in possession of the picture.—John Steers, esq. (of The Paper Buildings in The Temple) has an auction by Hogarth, in which Dr. Chauncey, Dr. Snagg, and others, are introduced; and the Earl of Exeter has a butcher's shop, with Slack fighting, &c.

Of Hogarth's lesser plates many were destroyed. When he wanted a piece of copper on a sudden, he would take any from which he had already worked off such a number of impressions as he supposed he should sell. He then sent it to be effaced, beat out, or otherwise altered to his present purpose.

The plates which remained in his possession were secured to Mrs. Hogarth by his will, dated August 12, 1764, chargeable with an annuity of 80 l. to his sister Anne,[78] who survived him. When, on the death of his other sister, she left off the business in which she was engaged (see, in the Catalogue, the first article among the "[Prints of uncertain date],") he kindly took her home, and generously supported her, making her, at the same time, useful in the disposal of his prints. Want of tenderness and liberality to his relations was not among the failings of Hogarth.

Of Hogarth's drawings and contributions towards the works of others, perhaps a number, on enquiry, might be found. An acquaintance of his, the late worthy Mr. John Sanderson, architect, who repaired Woburn Abbey, as well as Bedford House in Bloomsbury-square, possessed several of his curiosities. One was a sketch in black-lead of a celebrated young engraver (long since dead) in a salivation. The best that can be said of it is, that it was most disgustingly natural. Even the coarse ornaments on the corners of the blankets which enwrapped him, were characteristically expressed. Our artist seems to have repeated the same idea, though with less force, and fewer adjuncts, in the third of his Election prints, where a figure swaddled up in flannel is conveyed to the hustings. Two other works, viz. a drawing in Indian ink, and a painting in oil colours, exhibited Bedford House in different points of view; the figures only by Hogarth. Another represented the corner of a street, with a man drinking under the spout of a pump, and heartily angry with the water, which, by issuing out too fast, and in too great quantities, had deluged his face. Our great painter had obliged Mr. Sanderson with several other comic sketches, &c. but most of them had been either begged or stolen, before the communicator of these particulars became acquainted with him.

In the year 1745, Launcelot Burton was appointed naval officer at Deal. Hogarth had seen him by accident; and on a piece of paper, previously impressed by a plain copper-plate, drew his figure with a pen, in imitation of a coarse etching. He was represented on a lean Canterbury hack, with a bottle sticking out of his pocket; and underneath was an inscription, intimating that he was going down to take possession of his place. This was inclosed to him in a letter; and some of his friends, who were in the secret, protested the drawing to be a print which they had seen exposed to sale at the shops in London; a circumstance that put him in a violent passion, during which he wrote an abusive letter to Hogarth, whose name was subscribed to the work. But, after poor Burton's tormentors had kept him in suspence throughout an uneasy three weeks, they proved to him that it was no engraving, but a sketch with a pen and ink. He then became so perfectly reconciled to his resemblance, that he shewed it with exultation to Admiral Vernon, and all the rest of his friends.

In 1753, Hogarth returning with Dr. Morell from a visit to Mr. Rich at Cowley, stopped his chariot, and got out, being struck by a large drawing (with a coal) on the wall of an alehouse. He immediately made a sketch of it with triumph; it was a St. George and the Dragon, all in strait lines.

Hogarth made one essay in sculpture. He wanted a sign to distinguish his house in Leicester-fields; and thinking none more proper than the Golden Head, he, out of a mass of cork made up of several thicknesses compacted together, carved a bust of Vandyck, which he gilt and placed over his door. It is long since decayed, and was succeeded by a head in plaster, which has also perished; and is supplied by a head of Sir Isaac Newton. Hogarth modelled another resemblance of Vandyck in clay; which is likewise destroyed.

It is very properly observed by Mr. Walpole, that "If ever an author wanted a commentary, that none of his beauties might be lost, it is Hogarth; not from being obscure (for he never was that but in two or three of his first prints, where transient national follies, as Lotteries, Free-masonry, and the South Sea, were his topics) but for the use of foreigners, and from a multiplicity of little incidents, not essential to, but always heightening the principal action. Such is the spider's web extended over the poor's box in a parish church; the blunders in architecture in the nobleman's seat, seen through the window, in the first print of Marriage à la Mode; and a thousand in the Strollers dressing in a barn, which, for wit and imagination, without any other aid, is perhaps the best of all his works; as, for useful and deep satire, that on the Methodists is the most sublime. Rouquet, the enameller, published a French explanation, though a superficial one, of many of his prints, which, it was said, he had drawn up for the use of Marshal Belleisle, then a prisoner in England."

However great the deficiencies in this work may be, it was certainly suggested by Hogarth, and drawn up at his immediate request. I receive this information from undoubted authority. Some of the circumstances explanatory of the plates, he communicated; the rest he left to be supplied by Rouquet his near neighbour, who lived in the house at which Gardelle the enameller afterwards lodged, and murdered his landlady Mrs. King. Rouquet, who (as I learn from Mr. Walpole) was a Swiss of French extraction, had formerly published a small tract on the state of the Arts in England, and another, intituled "L'Art de peinture en fromage ou en ramequin, 1755;" 12mo. (V. "La France litteraire, ou Dictionaire des Auteurs François vivans, par M. Formey, 1757.") On the present occasion he was liberally paid by Hogarth, for having cloathed his sentiments and illustrations in a foreign dress. This pamphlet was designed, and continues to be employed, as a constant companion to all such sets of his prints as go abroad. Only the letter descriptive of the March to Finchley was particularly meant for the instruction of Marshal Belleisle.[79]