Page 60 - Studio International - March 1972

and urban societies. He touches here and there contribution was, in fact, Professor Paulson's
on the well-known lack of interest of settled own study and catalogue of the prints, Hogarth's
peasant societies in representational art and their Graphic Works, published in 1965. Why this
preference for an abstract linear ornament tremendous industry ? One reason is that
which we find equally in the earliest Neolithic Hogarth was a man of ideas, both in words and
cultures of Europe and in Indian villages of pictures, and art historians find it easier to
the present day. He shows this linear art being write about ideas than about paintings as such.
invaded by animal representations or animal Another reason lies in the nature of Hogarth's
ornament (about which he is particularly good), genius : he never repeated himself. Although he
with the emergence of barbarian societies which held some of his most important ideas
were not composed of peasants and which consistently and reiterated them often, he
established a dynamic and often hostile drew constantly on new sources of experience.
relationship with the growing urban civilizations He had an extraordinary capacity, rivalled
of the Near East. He shows, us the changing among English artists only by Turner, for
relationships of men and animals in the absorbing everything within his reach, in life,
societies of the ancient world and the early art and aesthetics, and turning it to account.
Middle Ages, and the way in which animals With the exception of party politics, on which
became archetypes and potent symbols in he remained discreetly silent for most of his
mystical philosophy. career, there was hardly anything going on in
In all this, Klingender handles an enormous the teeming life of eighteenth-century London
mass of material with great skill and accuracy. about which Hogarth didn't have an opinion.
Had he completed and revised his work, he Ronald Paulson's splendid Hogarth: His
might have presented it differently, perhaps Life, Art and Times is certainly a 'Life'. No
rearranging parts of it to bring out his main letter or manuscript has been left unexplored,
themes more clearly, making it less of a no anecdote forgotten. Wills, inventories, rate
one-damned-thing-after-another kind of books and registers of baptisms and burials
history. But the material is very solidly there, have been examined. Above all, Paulson has
and his research was not only wide but read through all the newspapers of the period
refreshingly good at mastering all kinds of (Hogarth regularly used the newspapers as a
special fields. means of announcing his projects) and has
Unfortunately the lapse of time since 1955 covered all the relevant pamphlets, treatises
does make a difference. The whole perspective and memoirs. Many new facts emerge, some of
of the prehistoric and ancient world has shifted them admittedly filling out or modifying
in these years, as new critical techniques eroded previously known outlines. One discovery,
the old synthesis and as a new one slowly began already referred to in other reviews, however,
to emerge. The book now seems old-fashioned is sensational, namely that while Hogarth was
in its historical approach. It seems old- a child his father spent several years confined
fashioned in another way. Klingender, who was in the precincts of the Fleet Prison for debt.
forty-seven when he died, came just at the end Paulson points to three formative influences on
of those one or two generations of Westerners the young Hogarth, who was born and brought
who treated the poetic intuitions of Freud and up near Smithfield Market: the prison, the
Marx as Revelation. It is through a familiar (to hospital and the fairground (St Bartholomew's
the point of contempt) and outmoded early- Hospital and Fair, as well as the Fleet, were
twentieth-century telescope that he looks at nearby). These influences coloured his whole
man's fate. This is not much more-than to say life and work, in far-reaching and subtle ways.
that in reading Animals in Art and Thought one The book is also a 'Times'. Whenever a
is conscious that one is not reading a work of the topical event occurs which touched Hogarth,
seventies. And the consciousness is connected there follows a short disquisition on it. The
with the fact that the book is essentially one of South Sea Bubble ? We get a potted history.
ideas-although these are based on a good deal of The Foundling Hospital ? We receive-naturally
research. It stands, in character, somewhere -an account of that. The Society of Arts ?
between the work of Emile Male and that of Ditto. And so on, down to the story of Mary
Andre Malraux. q Toft of Guildford, who was reported to have
LIAM DE PAOR given birth, slowly, to seventeen rabbits,
convulsing the medical profession and filling
Hogarth's opera the newspapers for days. The fraud was exposed
Hogarth: His Life, Art and Times by Ronald just as the eighteenth rabbit was expected. All
Paulson. 2 vols. 558 + 557 pp + 355 this, like the 'Life', makes fascinating reading.
illustrations. Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in The book holds the attention and the material
British Art. Yale University Press, New Haven is lucidly controlled.
and London. £17.50. The book is also a corrective to a popular
idea of Hogarth that has been gaining ground
The modern literature on Hogarth was already recently. He was not, whatever some people
richer than that on any other English would like to think, a prototype of today's
eighteenth-century artist, even before this revolutionary-or at least he cannot be made to
monumental biography (eleven hundred pages, appear as such without suppressing a good deal.
no less) appeared. The greatest single It is true that he was savagely critical of society,

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