Hogarth at Sir John Soane’s Museum

The Hogarth exhibition was hosted at Sir John Soane’s museum, so Hogarth’s lively intricate pieces were surrounded by Soane’s wonderful architecture and sketches.


Hogarth clearly believed in morality, industriousness and wisdom being rewarded while immorality, idleness and foolishness were punished by ill fate in his paintings. He fails to consider illness, madness and destitute affecting virtuous people or cruelty going unpunished. The central characters of Hogarth’s series are masters of their fate and fully responsible for the fortune or misfortune that befalls them. There is no consideration for society as a whole, only of the moral fabric of the individual. There is no room to repent or change for the better or worse. Intelligence, luck or skill don’t play a role.

Often, such as in the “Four Stages of Cruelty”, it is unclear how the cruel central character meets his bitter fate.

I did however relate to “Humours of an Election”. I don’t think we moved forward much in current times in terms of political scheming.