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William Hogarth; engraver; 1735; Greater London
Overview
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A Rake's Progress is a series of eight oil paintings by William Hogarth. The canvases were produced in 1732-33, then engraved and published in 1735. Te Papa has the set of eight engravings. The series shows the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, the spendthrift son and heir of a rich merchant, who comes to London, wastes all his money on luxurious living, prostitution and gambling, and as a consequence is imprisoned in the Fleet Prison and ultimately dies in the notorious Bethlem Hospital, or Bedlam. The original paintings are in Sir John Soane's Museum. London, where they are normally on display. The filmmaker Alan Parker has described the works as an ancestor to the storyboard. In Plate 1, Tom has come into his fortune on the death of his miserly father. While the servants mourn, he is measured for new clothes. Although he has had a common-law marriage with her, he now rejects the hand of his pregnant fiancée, Sarah Young, whom he had promised to marry (she holds his ring and her mother holds his love letters). He is casually and callously paying her off, but it is clear that she still loves him. Evidence of the father's miserliness abounds: his portrait above the fireplace shows him counting money; symbols of hospitality (a jack and spit) have been locked up at upper right; the coat of arms show three clamped vises with the motto "Beware"; a half starved cat reveals the father kept little food in the house, while lack of ashes in the fireplace demonstrates that he rarely spent money for wood to heat his home. The engraving at the left shows the father went so far as to resole shoes from a leather cover from a bible (showing disrespect to this holy book), so as not to pay a shoemaker for repairs. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rake's_Progress Dr Mark Stocker, Curator Historical International Art November 2016 |
