Cynthia Roman on “Hogarthian Progresses in Eighteenth-Century Graphic Satire”
Sequential narration in satiric prints is most famously associated with the “modern moral subjects” of William Hogarth (1697–1764): Harlot’s Progress (1732), A Rake’s Progress(1735), Marriage A-la-Mode (1745), and Industry and Idleness (1747) among others. Less well-known is the broad spectrum of legacy “progresses” produced by subsequent generations drawing both on Hogarth’s narrative strategies and his iconic motifs. James Gillray (1756–1815), celebrated for his innovative single-plate satires, was among the most accomplished printmakers to adopt Hogarthian sequential narration even as he transformed it according to his unique vision. Gillray’s forays into Hogarthian progresses kept the idiom relevant for further development by later graphic satirists including G.M. Woodward, Richard Newton, Charles Williams, Williams Elmes and George Cruikshank whose works will also be considered in this talk.
Cynthia Roman is Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Paintings, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. She is editor and contributor to Hogarth’s Legacy distributed by Yale University Press, 2016.
The 172nd meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, December 6, 2016 at 7pmat Parsons School of Design, The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public.