Pictures Every Child Should Know / A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young People

by Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

Hogarth must early have known something of vagabond life, for his father's life during his own youth must have brought him into association with all sorts of people. He knew how madhouses were run, how kings dined, how beggars slept in goods boxes, and many other useful items.

Hogarth said of himself: "Shows of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant, and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me.... My exercises, when at school, were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them, than for the exercises themselves." He became an engraver or silver-plater, being apprenticed to Mr. Ellis Gamble, at the sign of the "Golden Angel," Cranbourne Alley, Leicester Fields.

Engraving on silver plate was all well enough, but Hogarth aspired to become an engraver on copper, and he has said that this was about the highest ambition he had while he was in Cranbourne Alley.

The shop-card which he engraved for Mr. Ellis Gamble may have been the first significant piece of work he undertook. The card is still among the Hogarth relics. He set up as an engraver on his own account, though he did study a little in Sir James Thornhill's art school; but whatever he learned he turned to characteristic account.

He continued to make shop-cards, shop-bills, and book-plates. Finally, in 1727, a maker of tapestry engaged Hogarth to sketch him a design end he set to work ambitiously He worked throughout that year upon the design, but when he took it to the man it was refused. The truth was that the man who had commissioned the work had heard that Hogarth was "an engraver and no painter," and he had so little intelligence that he did not intend to accept his design, however much it might have pleased him. Hogarth sued the man for his refusal and he won the suit. He next began to make what he called "conversation pieces," little paintings about a foot high of groups of people, the figures being all portraits. These were very fashionable for a time and made some money for the artist. Both he and Watteau were fond of the stage, and both painted scenes from operas and plays.

In time he moved into lodgings at the "Golden Head," in Leicester Fields, and there he made his home. He had already begun the great paintings which were to make him famous among artists. These were a series of pictures, telling stories of fashionable and other life. His own story of how he came to think of the picture series was that he had always wished to present dramatic stories--present them in scenes as he saw them on the stage.

He had married the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, and had never been thought of kindly by his father-in-law till he made so much stir with his first series. Then Sir James approved of him, and Hogarth found life more pleasing.

There are very few anecdotes to tell of the artist's life, and the story of his pictures is much more amusing. One of his first satires was made into a pantomime by Theophilus Gibber, and another person made it into an opera. Many pamphlets and poems were written about it, and finally china was painted with its scenes and figures. There was as much to cry as to laugh over in Hogarth's pieces and that is what made them so truly great. One of his great picture series was called the "Rake's Progress" and it was a warning to all young men against leading too gay a life. It showed the "Rake" at the beginning of his misfortunes, gambling, and in the last reaping the reward of his follies in a debtor's prison and the madhouse. There are eight pictures in that set.

In this series, especially in the fifth picture, there are extraordinary proofs of Hogarth's completeness of ideas. Upon the wall in the room wherein the "Rake" marries an old woman for her money, the Ten Commandments are hung, all cracked, and the Creed also is cracked and nearly smudged out; while the poor-box is covered with cobwebs. The eight pictures brought to Hogarth only seventy guineas.

One of his pictures was suggested to him by an incident which greatly angered him. He had started for France on some errand of his own, and was in the very act of sketching the old gate at Calais, when he was arrested as a spy. Now Hogarth was a hard-headed Englishman, and when he was hustled back to England without being given time for argument, he was so enraged that he made his picture as grotesque as possible, to the lasting chagrin of France. He painted the French soldiers as the most absurd, thin little fellows imaginable, and that picture has largely influenced people's idea of the French soldier all over the English-speaking world.