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Selections from the Collection
William Hogarth
In 1730, the English artist William Hogarth (1697–1764) painted a work that he knew would be both popular and controversial, depicting a blowsy but still pretty prostitute taking tea as a magistrate arrives to arrest her. Encouraged by its reception, Hogarth created additional paintings that showed how the harlot Moll arrived at her situation and the tragic future in store for her. The result was A Harlot’s Progress, six paintings (since destroyed) and a wildly successful series of large etchings (1732–33) based on those canvases. A Harlot’s Progress was the first of what Hogarth called his “modern moral subjects,” dramatic, allusion-filled works that deftly combined comic brio, sermonizing, and satirical commentary on contemporary London (he quickly followed the Harlot series with the even more famous Rake’s Progress).
The original 1730 painting became Plate 3 of the Harlot’s Progress print series, which is currently on view in its entirety in Gallery 5. Like Enrique Chagoya in many works on view in Borderlandia, Hogarth here inserts a real historical figure into his narrative, adding an accessible context and a voyeuristic thrill to the fictional proceedings for the benefit of his eighteenth-century viewers. The bewigged and disapproving official entering Moll’s messy bedchamber bears the visage of Justice John Gonson, whose effort to stamp out the brothels surrounding Covent Garden was one of the major moral crusades of the era.
Lynne Kimura
Academic Liaison
