A Different Fella’s (and Gal’s) Progress

February 20, 2014 by jillaggie 3 Comments

It turns out that John Bunyan isn’t the only one who was known for a ” ___’s Progress.”

William Hogarth created two of them: The Rake’s Progress and A Harlot’s Progressm – they are a part of his Modern Moral Series.

The Tate Museum has an extensive online exhibit of Hogarth’s work.

Spending time at the virtual Tate was an interesting diversion, and the bio given there was OK enough, but nothing to write a blog about. It was cued up as a tweet, but I decided to check Wiki…

Here’s what I read that makes me think we were supposed to find him:

• He’s the father of comics! “Hogarth (10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called “modern moral subjects”.
• Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as “Hogarthian”.
• He painted: The Gate of Calais (1748) “Hogarth produced the painting directly after his return from France, where he had been arrested as a spy while sketching in Calais.”

Artist William Hogarth Year 1748 Type Oil-on-canvas Dimensions 80 cm × 96 cm (31 in × 37 5⁄8 in) Location Tate Britain, London

“The scene depicts a side of beef being transported from the harbour to an English tavern in the port, while a group of undernourished, ragged French soldiers and a fat friar look on hungrily. Hogarth painted himself in the left corner with a “soldier’s hand upon my shoulder.”^[1]”

“The The Gate of Calais’ secondary title, O, the Roast Beef of Old England, is a reference to the popular patriotic ballad ‘The Roast Beef of Old England‘ from Henry Fielding’s The Grub-Street Opera (1731), which told of how the food “ennobled our brains and enriched our blood” and laughed at “all-vapouring France””.

About the Grub Street Opera (by Henry Fielding):

The author of the play is identified as Scriblerus Secundus. Secundus also appears in the play and speaks of his role in composing the plays.

The Grub-Street Opera is the first truly political play and also Fielding’s first ballad opera. As such it owes a lot to Fielding’s model, John Gay‘s The Beggar’s Opera. Unlike his other Scriblerus plays, Fielding’s Scriblerus persona in The Grub-Street Opera is deeply connected to Gay instead of Gay’s fellow members of the Scriblerus Club, Alexander Pope or Jonathan Swift.

So we’re back to the Scriblerus Club via Progress and Calais . . .(and wasn’t there a mention of “Tate” in one of the ads accompanying the review?)