A Moral For Our Time

Philippa Stockley revels in the humour, perspicacity and story-telling that radiate from Hogarth’s ‘Progress’ series

As Britain embarks on redefining Britishness, the work of that most British painter, William Hogarth, goes on display today in an exhibition worthy of his genius. Versatile engraving skill, storytelling gymnastics, exquisite sartorial observation, biting wit and naughty fun: all these can be enjoyed in the perfect setting of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

The museum has united all Hogarth’s works done in series form for the first time, with four complete painted series and others engraved. They include the great ‘Progress’ sets (the term, inspired by John Bunyan, describing here a moral and didactic narrative told in six or more pictures), ranging from the early ‘A Harlot’s Progress’ (engraved; the painted set burned in 1755) to the late ‘The Humours of an Election’ (1754).

Hogarth referred to his series as ‘Modern Moral Subjects’, a striking phrase that aligned them with that exciting new literary form, the novel. Just as writers such as Henry Fielding and Daniel Defoe embedded a moral core within an enticing and racy story (Tom Jones, for example, or Defoe’s delicious Moll Flanders), so Hogarth invested even his most apparently tragic works with a sexual frisson or voyeurism. Unlike those baggy writers, however, he was a master of abbreviation; indeed, it’s a wonder how much he managed to cram into only six to eight paintings.