Hogarth and Europe exhibition book

Illustrating the full range of William Hogarth’s most important paintings and prints, this hardback exhibition book shows them in a new light, juxtaposed with work by major European contemporaries who influenced him or took their inspiration from him in their painting of modern life – including Watteau, Chardin, Troost and Longhi. Hogarth is revealed not only as a key figure in British art history, but also as a major European artist.

In what was a time of war (mostly) and peace (occasionally), of extraordinary wealth and grinding poverty, gargantuan appetites and desperate famines, high ideals and hypocrisy, the Enlightenment and racial inequity, in the midst of this turmoil flourished one of Britain’s greatest artists: painter, printmaker, satirist, and social critic William Hogarth. With Hogarth’s works ranging from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of satirical pictures, the essayist and poet Charles Lamb once said of him: ‘Other pictures we look at; his pictures we read’.

Accompanying the 2021 Tate Britain exhibition, the catalogue is also a tale of four cities: London, Paris, Venice and Amsterdam, represented in maps from the period. The themes of city life, social protest, sexuality and satire which come to the fore in the art of Hogarth and his contemporaries are very much live today.

Martin Myrone is Convenor, British Art Network, at the Paul Mellon Centre, London.
Alice Insley is Assistant Curator at Tate Britain.

• Dimensions 26.5 x 21 cm
• ISBN 9781849767682
• Hardback Yes
• Number of illustrations 200
• No of pages 208
• Product Promotion Label Special Exhibition Price