Hogarth and Europe

A handsome book featuring the full range of Hogarth's most important paintings and prints and juxtaposing them with work by major European contemporaries

It was a century of war (mostly) and peace (occasionally), ofextraordinary wealth and grinding poverty, gargantuan appetites anddesperate famines, high ideals and hypocrisy, a century of intellectual,social and religious turmoil. In this fertile turbulence flourished one of Britain's greatest artists: painter, printmaker, satirist, and social criticWilliam Hogarth, of whom the essayist and poet Charles Lamb once said, 'Other pictures we look at; his pictures we read'.

Illustrating the full range of Hogarth's most important paintings and prints, this book shows them in a new light, juxtaposed with work by major European contemporaries who influenced him or took their inspiration from him in their painting of modern life - includingWatteau, Chardin, Troost and Longhi.

Hogarth is revealed not only as a key figure in British art history, but also as a major European artist. It is also a tale of four cities: London, Paris, Venice and Amsterdam, represented in maps from the period. The themes of city life, social protest, sexuality and satire which come to the fore in the art ofHogarth and his contemporaries are very much live today.

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