Hogarth:
His Life, Art and Times

With the same kind of sensitive scholarship he displayed in Hogarth’s Graphic Works, Mr. Paulson offers the first accurate and complete biography of the artist. Utilizing all relevant contemporary records and documents to illuminate certain hitherto unexplored areas, the author points out the parallels between Hogarth’s life and his engravings and paintings. Included are detailed accounts of Hogarth’s five-year residence within the Rules of the Fleet Prison while his father was confined for debt, his role in liberating the English artist from dependence on patronage, and his participation in the great charitable movements of his era. Mr. Paulson presents a comprehensive study of Hogarth as both artist and writer and traces the development of his particular artistic genre – ‘comic history painting’ – relating it to the other graphic and literary schools of the time and elucidating the aesthetic theory involved.

This book is illustrated with reproductions of many of Hogarth’s engravings and paintings and the work of his predecessors and contemporaries.