British 1697-1764 William Hogarth Galleries Early satirical works included an Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme (c.1721), about the disastrous stock market crash of 1720 known as the South Sea Bubble, in which many English people lost a great deal of money. In the bottom left corner, he shows Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish figures gambling, while in the middle there is a huge machine, like a merry-go-round, which people are boarding. At the top is a goat, written below which is "Who'l Ride" and this shows the stupidity of people in following the crowd in buying stock in The South Sea Company, which spent more time issuing stock than anything else. The people are scattered around the picture with a real sense of disorder, which represented the confusion. The progress of the well dressed people towards the ride in the middle shows how foolish some people could be, which is not entirely their own fault. Other early works include The Lottery (1724); The Mystery of Masonry brought to Light by the Gormogons (1724); A Just View of the British Stage (1724); some book illustrations; and the small print, Masquerades and Operas (1724). The latter is a satire on contemporary follies, such as the masquerades of the Swiss impresario John James Heidegger, the popular Italian opera singers, John Rich's pantomimes at Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the exaggerated popularity of Lord Burlington's prot??g??, the architect and painter William Kent. He continued that theme in 1727, with the Large Masquerade Ticket. In 1726 Hogarth prepared twelve large engravings for Samuel Butler's Hudibras. These he himself valued highly, and are among his best book illustrations. In the following years he turned his attention to the production of small "conversation pieces" (i.e., groups in oil of full-length portraits from 12 to 15 in. high). Among his efforts in oil between 1728 and 1732 were The Fountaine Family (c.1730), The Assembly at Wanstead House, The House of Commons examining Bambridge, and several pictures of the chief actors in John Gay's popular The Beggar's Opera. One of his masterpieces of this period is the depiction of an amateur performance of John Dryden's The Indian Emperor, or The Conquest of Mexico (1732?C1735) at the home of John Conduitt, master of the mint, in St George's Street, Hanover Square. Hogarth's other works in the 1730s include A Midnight Modern Conversation (1733), Southwark Fair (1733), The Sleeping Congregation (1736), Before and After (1736), Scholars at a Lecture (1736), The Company of Undertakers (Consultation of Quacks) (1736), The Distrest Poet (1736), The Four Times of the Day (1738), and Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn (1738). He may also have printed Burlington Gate (1731), evoked by Alexander Pope's Epistle to Lord Burlington, and defending Lord Chandos, who is therein satirized. This print gave great offence, and was suppressed (some modern authorities, however, no longer attribute this to Hogarth).  Related Paintings of William Hogarth :. | Portrait of the Duchess | The Beggar's Opera | Dialogue | Portrat der Madam Salter | President Andrew and friends |
Related Artists:
Jan Kupecky
(in German: Johann Kupetzky, in Hungarian: Kupecky Jenos, or Kupeczky Jenos, 1667, Bazin, Royal Hungary (today Slovakia) - 1740, Nernberg, Germany) was a Czech and Slovak portrait painter during the baroque. He was active in Hungary, Slovakia, Vienna and Nernberg. Kupecký, like many people at that time, was the son of Protestant (Czech Brethren) parents from the Czech lands (Mlade Boleslav) who sought refuge in Slovakia (constituting the core of Royal Hungary at that time) from religious persecution by the Catholics. He was born in Pezinok - a town near Bratislava. According to the sources he began his studies with the Swiss painter Benedikt Klaus, who was active in both Vienna and in Royal Hungary. At the age of twenty, Kupecký went on a long Italian study trip. In Rome Prince Aleksander Benedykt Sobieski, the son of the Polish king John III Sobieski, helped him to become famous. He returned to Vienna in 1709, after twenty-two years spent in Venice and Rome. We know very little of his Italian activity as well as his early works and his setting in Vienna. According to his contemporary biographer, the Swiss Johann Caspar Fessli, the Protestant Kupecký, who faithfully clung to his ancestor's religion, remained withdrawn and isolated in Vienna's Catholic milieu, which was under the influence of the court and the aristocracy. However this concept is partly contradicted by the fact that the master had significant courtly commissions while working in Vienna. He painted portraits of various members of the dynasty, Prince Eugene of Savoy, several aristocrats, and, in Karlovy Vary, even of the Russian Czar Peter I. The rich ceuvre of this period comprises a series of gorgeous portraits of Kupecky's family, friends and the painter himself, as well as several persons, whose identity in unknown. In 1733 Kupecký, fearing religious persecution, fled from Vienna to Nernberg with his family and worked there until his death in 1740. As the most significant portrait painter of contemporary Germany, he was commissioned by a large number of German princes, church dignitaries rich merchants and scholars, and his works were popularized by engravings even during his lifetime. Through his pupils and followers Kupecký's influence and artistic example remained alive and widespread for a long time.
Worthington Whittredge
1820-1910 Thomas Worthington Whittredge (May 22, 1820 - February 25, 1910) was an American artist of the Hudson River School. Whittredge was a highly regarded artist of his time, and was friends with several leading Hudson River School artists including Albert Bierstadt and Sanford Robinson Gifford. He traveled widely and excelled at landscape painting, many examples of which are now in major museums. He served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1874 to 1875 and was a member of the selection committees for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and the 1878 Paris Exposition, both important venues for artists of the day. Whittredge was born in a log cabin near Springfield, Ohio in 1820. He painted landscapes and portraits as a young man in Cincinnati before traveling to Europe in 1849 to further his artistic training. Arriving in Germany he settled at the Dusseldorf Academy, a major art school of the period, and studied with Emanuel Leutze. At Dusseldorf, Whittredge befriended Bierstadt and posed for Leutze as both George Washington and a steersman in Leutze??s famous painting ??Washington Crossing the Delaware??, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Whittredge spent nearly ten years in Europe, meeting and travelling with other important artists including Sanford Gifford. He returned to the United States in 1859 and settled in New York City where he launched his career as a landscape artist painting in the Hudson River School style. Whittredge journeyed across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains in 1865 with Sanford Gifford and John Frederick Kensett. The trip resulted in some of Whittredge??s most important works??unusually oblong, spare landscapes that captured the stark beauty and linear horizon of the Plains. Whittredge later wrote in his autobiography, ??I had never seen the plains or anything like them. They impressed me deeply. I cared more for them than for the mountains... Whoever crossed the plains at that period, not withstanding its herds of buffalo and flocks of antelope, its wild horses, deer and fleet rabbits, could hardly fail to be impressed with its vastness and silence and the appearance everywhere of an innocent, primitive existence." Whittredge moved to Summit, New Jersey, in 1880 where he continued to paint for the rest of his life. He died in 1910 at the age of 89 and is buried in the Springfield, New Jersey cemetery. Whittredge's paintings are now in the collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.
Lucius O Brien
Canadian Painter, 1832-1899