Hogarth: Life in Progress

Description

On a warm Friday night in 1732, a rowdy group of friends set out from a pub. They are beginning a 'peregrination' that will take them through the scurrilous streets of Georgian London and down the Thames as far as the Isle of Sheppey. And among them is an up-and-coming engraver and painter, just beginning to make a name for himself: William Hogarth. Hogarth's work has come to define early-Georgian Britain; and it speaks to us with equal relevance today. Here, for the first time in over twenty years, Jacqueline Riding brings the artist - and his world - to vivid and detailed life. Following in his own footsteps, Hogarth illuminates an ambitious self-made man, a philanthropist, satirist, devoted husband and an artist who aspired to the highest principles even while charting humanity's lowest vices.

Dr Jacqueline Riding is a historian and art historian specialising in British history and art of the long eighteenth century. Former curator of the Palace of Westminster and Director of the Handel House Museum, she is an award-winning author as well as a consultant for museums, galleries, historic buildings and feature films. She was the adviser on Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner (2014), Peterloo (2018) and Wash Westmoreland's Colette (2018).

In this marvellous and timely new biography, Jacqueline Riding makes sensitive and imaginative use of a wide range of often difficult and neglected sources, offering in the process a vivid and compelling reconstruction of the settings of Hogarth's life and artistic achievements, and of the nature of the man -- Linda Colley, author * The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World * If you are not familiar with the particular genius of Hogarth, this is the book through which to discover it. And if you are a fellow Hogarth fanatic then you are in for an exquisite treat. This is a special book that drops you heart first into Hogarth's world - like the great man's canvasses, it is full of richness, originality and considered humour, unafraid to shock with thrilling new insight -- Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, Director of V&A East and Professor of Practice, SOAS [An] excellent new biography ... Riding is particularly good on how the boy who was born into modest circumstances in 1697 spent much of the first half of his life wanting to be a 'proper' artist dealing with grand, historical subjects. -- Kathryn Hughes * Daily Mail * Deft and richly detailed ... rescues the artist from John Bull caricature -- Michael Prodger * Sunday Times * William Hogarth is too easily seen as the John Bull of painters, a bluff xenophobe who showed British life in all its earthiness and humour. Jacqueline Riding, however, reveals a far more nuanced and interesting man -- Michael Prodger, The art book of the year * Sunday Times * An entertaining ... richly worked and varied "progress" ... amid the displays of wounded vanity and cantankerous self-assertion, there remains something hugely impressive, and rather attractive, in the Hogarth who emerges from these pages -- Matthew Sturgis * The Oldie * [Hogarth] was far more than a mere depicter of his age and an artist of skill and talent. He was also a complex and active human being who was living within the society he drew. As such, he is worthy of a thorough and considered biography that captures the man of the time as well as the artist. That is exactly what Jacqueline Riding has brilliantly provided ... [Hogarth] is of the highest value in showing there was so much more to Hogarth than 'Gin Lane', but in also explaining exactly why he was able to create such a lasting image of his times." -- George Goodwin * London Historians * Splendidly vivid, richly informative and remarkably researched ... this comprehensive study must surely be the definitive work on Hogarth. -- Brian Cooper * Church of England Newspaper * Exhilarating ... [Riding] sets out to present to us 'a more rounded Billy Hogarth', and, by and large, she succeeds. There he is, with all his feuds and flarings, his warmth and conviviality, his occasional paranoia ... Only a killjoy would deny the charm of this picaresque narrative -- Ferdinand Mount * TLS * The definitive life of Hogarth. The full technicolour panorama of Georgian life laid out in a huge and passionate book -- Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces and author * Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court *