A Classical Aspect of Hogarth's Theory of Art Author(s): J. T. A. Burke Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol.

6 (1943), pp. 151-153 Published by: The Warburg Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750429 . Accessed: 08/09/2013 19:49
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A CLASSICAL ASPECT OF HOGARTH'S THEORY OF ART By J. T. A. Burke

he striking subject of the first plate of William Hogarth's Analysisof Beautyis a statuary's yard (P1. 41a). In it are assembled those specimens of classical sculpture that the eighteenth century most admired, so that the plate is a document of contemporary taste. The Laocoon group and the famous statues of Apollo, Venus and Hercules are, moreover, surrounded by 18th century buildings and accessories. A French dancing master is beckoning the Antinous to stand up straight and put his chest out, like himself. The statue of the seated Judge rests on a capital ornamented, in defiance of Vitruvius and Palladio, with wigs and three-corneredhats. Where did Hogarth get the idea for this entertaining and instructive scene? The answer to this question is to be found in three sheets bound amongst some miscellaneous papers in Hogarth's autograph in the British Museum.1 These sheets are a translation of those sections of Xenophon's

Memorabiliain which Socrates discusses the theory of beauty.2 They are in the hand of Dr. Thomas Morell, the classical scholar and Handelian librettist, and a staunch friend of Hogarth's.3 That he was also a 'collaborator' in the Analysis of Beauty is shown by certain corrections and emendations in the third manuscript draft, which the writer has identified as being also in his hand.4 One of the extracts from the Memorabilia describes a visit paid by Socrates to the yard of his friend Clito the statuary. Hogarth must have been struck by the convenience of this device for his similar purpose. He constructs his own statuary's yard and fills it with the objects of his choice. In the pages of the Analysis he takes us, first into the yard, and then into the assembly room, to discuss what he has got ready there to show us. The margins of the plates are a sort of overflow for objects that have been crowded out from the central pictures. This wealth and directness of illustration is one of the principal delights of the book, and it is also an essential feature of the Socratic method. The ancient Greek would have admired the juxtaposition of the familiar and the august, the nimbleness with which Hogarth's mind ranged over Gods and Goddesses, Windsor Castle, dairymaids, a common jack and a clock "for the keeping of true time at sea." Indeed, Socrates himself provided the authority for recognizing beauty in unconventional places: Is then a Labourer's hod, or a dung basket, says Aristippus, a beautiful thing? Undoubtedly, says Socrates; and a shield of Gold may be a vile thing, consider'd as a shield; the former being adapted to their proper use, and this not. No doubt Aristippus was properly shocked, but Hogarth was delighted. He not only adopted the principle laid down in the reply of Socrates, but made it the subject of his first chapter, "Of Fitness." In this chapter Hogarth developed the theme that fitness of the parts to the design for which every individual thing is formed, either by art or nature, is "of the greatest consequence" to the beauty of the whole. Similarly, in the Memorabilia, Socrates had said that "all things, that men make use of, seem good and beautiful for the same purpose, namely the proper use to which it is

applied." By stressing the relationship of parts to the whole, Hogarth was able to analyse his illustrationsin much greater detail. In shipbuilding he points out that the dimensions of every part are regulated by fitness for sailing: "When a vessel sails well, the sailors call her a beauty; the two
ideas have such a connexion !" It is in his analysis of the human form, however, that he is at his happiest, and here again the cue comes from the Memorabilia: Aristippus asking him whether he knew anything that could be called beautiful; yes, says Socrates, many things. Are then all things alike? says he. No, replied Socrates, there is as wide a difference between them as is possible. How then, says Aristippus, can that be beautiful which is unlike what is beautiful? Very easily, says Socrates, because a man that is beautiful and well made for running a Race is very different from one that is so for wrestling.
1 MS. Add. 27992, 33-35. 2 Book III, Chapterf.8 (part only) and Chapter io. 3 There is an excellent character sketch of Morell in John
151

Nichol's LiteraryIllustrations,1812-1815, I, pp. 655-656. 4 The third manuscript draft is contained in two quarto volumes, MSS Egerton 301o5 and 3016.

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J. T. A. BURKE In his first chapter Hogarth substitutes for the runner and the wrestler, the race-horse and the war-horse. For his final example he takes the Hercules, which has all its parts fitted for the purpose of the utmost strength that the human form can bear:
1552

The back, breast and shoulders have huge bones and muscles adequate to the supposed active strength of its upper parts; but as less strength was required for the lower parts, the judicious sculptor, contrary to all modern rules of enlarging every part in proportion, lessen'd the size of the muscles gradually down towards the feet; and for the same reason made the neck larger in circumferencethan any part of the head; otherwise the figure would have been burden'd with an unnecessary weight, which would have been a drawback from his strength, and in consequence of that, from his characteristic beauty.1 It is amusing to note, in passing, that Diderot, in the Salon of 1765, borrowed this illustration, together with the war-horse and the race-horse, without acknowledgement. His version, which is sufficiently lively to deserve quoting, begins with a character of Hercules and continues:Sur quelles parties d'un homme de cet 6tat l'exag6rationpermanente doit-elle principalement les tomber? Sur la tete? Non; on ne bat pas de la tete, on n'6crase pas de la tete... Sur ' s'ils sont aussi le et ils la bien les Il suffit Non. feront, peu figure, pieds portent que pieds? pres proportionn6s? la hauteur. Sur le cou? Oui, sans doute. C'est l'origine des muscles et des nerfs; et le cou sera exag6r6 de grosseur, un peu au deli de la proportion donn6e.2 The beauty of different physical types is a theme to which Hogarth returns in chapter XI, "Of Proportion." Here he distinguishesbetween purely formal beauty and the beauty of fitness: the first is governed by the serpentine line, the second arises "chiefly from a fitness to some design'd purpose or use." His classical illustrations are the Antinous, Mercury and an imaginary figure of Atlas. More numerous are the delightful examples taken from his own observations of everyday life:Watermen, too, are of a distinct cast, or character, whose legs are no less remarkablefor their smallness, for as there is naturally the greatest call for nutriment to the parts that are most exercised, so of course these that lye so much stretched out, are apt to dwindle, or not grow to their full size. There is scarcely a waterman that rows upon the Thames, whose figure doth not confirm this observation.3 In a conversation with Parrhasius,the painter, Socrates discussesthe expressionof character by the face. Again, Hogarth follows his argument; again, the illustrations are entirely his own and the theory of fitness is wedded to the theory of the serpentine line. The grossnessof Silenus, for instance, is represented by the bulging lines running through the features of his face as well as by his swinish body. Plain lines, on the other hand, render the face "silly and ridiculous."4 The Greek influence on the Analysisis, as all influences should be, a stimulating rather than a dominating one: Hogarth's fancy plays with the ideas, assimilates them into his linear system and illustrates them from his personal observation. Socrates relates the beauty of architecture to the conditions of climate; his illustration of the house, however, is valid only for the Mediterranean.
Hogarth discards the illustration but employs the argument to pour scorn on contemporary classicism: "Were a modern architect to build a palace in Lapland, or the West Indies, Paladio must be his guide, nor would he dare to stir a step without his book."'5 It was remarks like the above that gained Hogarth his reputation, which still persists, as an enemy of the ancients and the Old Masters, and made him the target of contemporary artists like Paul Sandby and modern critics like the late Roger Fry.6 No estimate could be farther from the
1 The Analysisof Beauty, 1753, p. 15. 2 Diderot, Oeuvres, ed. Ass6zat, x875-77, Tom. X, p. 305. 3 Analysis, p. 85. 4Analysis, p. 129. 5 Ibid., p. 45. 6 See the section on Hogarth in Roger Fry's Reflectionson British Painting, 1934.

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A CLASSICALASPECT OF HOGARTH'S THEORY OF ART

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truth. The Analysisis Hogarth's testament to the culture of the Mediterranean. His quarrel was not with the ancients, but with the connoisseurs; not with the classics, but with contemporary classicism. He constantly appeals to the standards of classical sculpture. Moreover, the comparison that we have just made shows that in one vital respect Hogarth's spirit was truer to the Greek than that of the contemporaries with whom he warred. He had inherited the desire for new things as well as the love of old ones. Socrates was able to see beauty in a labourer'shod and a dung basket; Hogarth in a common jack and a tea-lamp. Both rebelled against the dead hand of convention, and both suffered for their rebellion. Hogarth, we have seen, listened with advantage to Socrates talking in the yard of Clito; his debt to classical antiquity was a real one, and none the less so because his statement of it bears the impress of an original mind.

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41

a-The

Statuary's Yard.

From William Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty, 1753 (p. I5 I)

Detail from the Second Picture of b-Hogarth, the Election Series (p. 223)

c-Sir Joshua Reynolds, Eleanor Torriano (Mrs. Joseph Martin) and her son. E. Holland Martin Coll., Overbury Court, Tewkesbury (p. 220)

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