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List of Publications on William Hogarth

More detailed Information:

• Book on Hogarth's Enthusiasm Delineated (1996; based on the author's PhD thesis, which was completed in 1994)
  
  
• Abstracts of the author's essays on William Hogarth, published between the years 1997 and 2002
  
  
• Book on Hogarth's Hidden Parts (2010)
  
  
• More recent publications

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Hagarty, not Hogarth? The True Defender of English 'Wit and Humour'", in The Dumb show: Image and society in the works of William Hogarth, ed. Frédéric Ogée, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1997 [Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 357], 141-59.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "O the Roast Beef of Old England: Hogarth in BSEfreier Zeit vor dem Tor von Calais", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 1997 [Saarbrücken: SDV, 1998], 29-52, 115, 178, 195, 217.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Hogarth's A Rake's Progress: An 'Anti-Passion' in Disguise", 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, 4 (1998), 137-82.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "We see a Ghost: Hogarth's Satire on Methodists and Connoisseurs", Art Bulletin, 80 (June 1998), 292-310.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Lust in Hogarth's Sleeping Congregation - Or, How to Waste Time in Post-Puritan England", Art History, 21, no. 3 (September 1998), 393-408.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Hogarth's 'A Rake's Progress' als 'Anti-Passion' Christi (Teil 1)", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 1998 [Saarbrücken: SDV, 1999], 204-42.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Patriotisches Rindfleisch, Pariser Pantinen und eine jakobitische Krähe: Ein auf Erkenntnissen von Katharina Braum fußender Nachtrag zu Hogarths 'Gate of Calais' nebst einer ergänzenden Hypothese von Elizabeth Einberg", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 1998 [Saarbrücken: SDV, 1999], 286-92.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Hans-Georg von Arburg, Kunst-Wissenschaft um 1800. Studien zu Georg Christoph Lichtenbergs Hogarth-Kommentaren. Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 1998 (Lichtenberg-Studien. Herausgegeben von Stefan Brüdermann und Ulrich Joost. Band XI)", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 1998 [Saarbrücken: SDV, 1999], 347-53. [Book review.]

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Bernd W. Krysmanski, "Joachim Möller, ed. Hogarth in Context: Ten Essays and a Bibliography (Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 1996); Peter Wagner, Reading Iconotexts: From Swift to the French Revolution (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 1995)", Eighteenth-Century Studies, 33, no. 1 (Fall 1999), 139-41. [Book reviews.]

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Hogarths 'A Rake's Progress' als 'Anti-Passion' Christi: Ein Erklärungsversuch (Teil 2)", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 1999 [Saarbrücken: SDV, 2000], 113-60.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Lichtenbergs Hogarth. Die Kalender-Erklärungen von Georg Christoph Lichtenberg mit den Nachstichen von Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen zu den Kupferstich-Tafeln von William Hogarth. Herausgegeben von Wolfgang Promies, München; Wien: Carl Hanser Verlag 1999", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 1999 [Saarbrücken: SDV, 2000], 257-68. [Book review.]

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Benjamin Ralph's School of Raphael (1759): Praise for Hogarth and a Direct Source for Reynolds", British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 24 (Spring 2001), 15-32.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "William Hogarths Kritik an der Balance des Peintres: Roger de Piles, Jonathan Richardson, Mark Akenside und Joseph Spence im Fadenkreuz der englischen Satire", in Joachim Möller (ed.), Sister Arts: Englische Literatur im Grenzland der Kunstgebiete, Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 2001, 51-75.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Zum Millennium: ein kurzer Blick auf die vorherrschenden Trends der Hogarth-Forschung", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 2001 [Saarbrücken: SDV, 2002], 194-206.

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Bernd Krysmanski, Hogarth's Hidden Parts: Satiric Allusion, Erotic Wit, Blasphemous Bawdiness and Dark Humour in Eighteenth-Century English Art, Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Georg Olms, 2010.

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B. Krysmanski, "Hogarth, William", in Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, ed. Andreas Beyer, Bénédicte Savoy and Wolf Tegethoff, vol. 74: Hoelscher-Hornstein (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 168-76.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Warnings of Morality or Downright Twisted Pleasure? William Hogarth's Depiction of Violence", in Kassandra Nakas / Jessica Ullrich (eds.), Scenes of the Obscene: The Non-Representable in Art and Visual Culture, Middle Ages to Today, Kromsdorf / Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2014, 37-63.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Der pädophile Adelsspross: Warum die arrangierte Ehe 'nach der Mode' scheitern musste. Eine Neubewertung von Hogarths Marriage A-la-Mode aus sexualgeschichtlicher Sicht zum 250jährigen Todestag des Künstlers", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 2013 [Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2015], 57-141.

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Bernd Krysmanski, Das einzig authentische Porträt des Alten Fritz? Entdeckt in Hogarths 'Marriage A-la-Mode.' Is the only true likeness of Frederick the Great to be found in Hogarth's 'Marriage A-la-Mode'? Dinslaken: Krysman Press, 2015.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Lust an der Gewalt? Brutalität und Grausamkeit in Hogarths Bildern", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 2014 [Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2016], 79-114.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "A Harlot's Progress von William Hogarth: Aufstieg und Fall einer Hure. Der Forschungsstand für deutsche Leser", Online Essay, The Site for Research on William Hogarth, 2016 (updated 2022).

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Nur Hogarth zeigt den Alten Fritz wahrheitsgemäß mit krummem ‘Zinken’ – die uns vertrauten Bilder von Pesne bis Menzel tun dies nicht", in Maria Effinger et al. (eds.), Von analogen und digitalen Zugängen zur Kunst: Festschrift für Hubertus Kohle zum 60. Geburtstag (Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net, 2019), 83-116.

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Does Hogarth Depict Old Fritz Truthfully with a Crooked Beak? – The Pictures Familiar to Us from Pesne to Menzel Don't Show This" Online Essay, ART-dok (Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net, 2022), 1-46.

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Bernd W. Krysmanski, "Introduction: A Brief Account of Hogarth's Life and Work", in Bernd W. Krysmanski (ed.), Hogarth: 50 New Essays: International Perspectives on Eighteenth-Century English Art (forthcoming).

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Bernd W. Krysmanski, "The Paedophilic Husband: Why the Marriage A-la-Mode Failed", in Bernd W. Krysmanski (ed.), Hogarth: 50 New Essays: International Perspectives on Eighteenth-Century English Art (forthcoming).

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Bernd W. Krysmanski, "Hogarth's Gate of Calais: An Expression of Anti-French Nationalism", in Bernd W. Krysmanski (ed.), Hogarth: 50 New Essays: International Perspectives on Eighteenth-Century English Art (forthcoming).

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Bernd W. Krysmanski, "Hogarth and Dürer: A Case of Rejection and Hidden, Ironic Borrowing", in Bernd W. Krysmanski (ed.), Hogarth: 50 New Essays: International Perspectives on Eighteenth-Century English Art (forthcoming).

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Bernd W. Krysmanski, "Hogarth's Unknown Caricature of Johnson", in Bernd W. Krysmanski (ed.), Hogarth: 50 New Essays: International Perspectives on Eighteenth-Century English Art (forthcoming).

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Bernd Krysmanski, "Is it really Locke? Hogarth's dubious attitudes towards children", in Joachim Möller / Bernd Krysmanski (eds.), Creative Reception: John Locke's Impact on Literature and Pictorial Art (forthcoming).

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Bernd W. Krysmanski, A Hogarth Bibliography: An Annotated Index on the Source Literature of William Hogarth and his Works, Collated as an Interdisciplinary Research Tool, 2 vols. (forthcoming).

MORE DETAILED INFORMATION ON THE AUTHOR'S PUBLICATIONS ON WILLIAM HOGARTH:

Bernd Krysmanski, Hogarth's Enthusiasm Delineated: Nachahmung als Kritik am Kennertum. Eine Werkanalyse. Zugleich ein Einblick in das sarkastisch-aufgeklärte Denken eines "Künstlerrebellen" im englischen 18. Jahrhundert.

English title: Hogarth's Enthusiasm Delineated: Borrowing from the Old Masters as a Weapon in the War between an English Artist and self-styled Connoisseurs. A detailed study in iconology against a background of religion, society and culture in mid-eighteenth-century England. Based primarily on primary sources.

2 volumes, Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Georg Olms, 1996.

ISBN: 3-487-10233-1 and 3-487-10234-X.

Volume 1: main text. Volume 2: summary for English readers, appendix including quotations from contemporary sources, bibliography and index. XVII/1469 pages. 446 illustrations.

Enlarged and slightly revised version of the author's PhD thesis of 1994, now containing, in volume 2, apart from the contemporary sources and the 446 illustrations, a summary for English readers and a comprehensive index. See also the German abstract by the author and the English review by Thomas Krämer, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 33, no. 1 (1999), 143-45.

ABSTRACT

William Hogarth's Enthusiasm Delineated (1761) is an artist's manifesto which could well be renamed "Hogarth Delineated". Its imagery, borrowed - ironically - from "high" art (e.g. from works by Raphael, Dürer, Michelangelo, Correggio, Rubens, Rembrandt or Charles Le Brun), provides the key to a new understanding of the purpose behind Hogarth's taking single motifs from the works of highly reputed Old Masters and using them in new, topical, but often "low" contexts. The author's interdisciplinary study interprets this borrowing method as a cleverly contrived "anti-iconography" with which Hogarth ridicules the English self-styled connoisseurs of his time. A novelty in Hogarth research, the study also contains a thorough formal analysis of the print.

In addition to Enthusiasm Delineated, numerous other Hogarth works are reassessed in detail. A seventy-page excursus deals with the pulpiteer as an artistic motif through the ages. The text includes a great number of original quotations from contemporary periodicals, pamphlets and treatises, concerning the theory of art (eclecticism, picture auctions, criticism of connoisseurship, the profane and blasphemy in art), the history of religion and religious tradition (English Puritanism, deism, Methodism [particularly George Whitefield], antipapism, witchcraft and demonology, iconoclasm, anti-Semitism, antitrinitarianism, the debate on transubstantiation), as well as social, cultural and medical history (the anatomy of the brain, the maltreatment of dogs, physiognomy, eroticism, sex murder, eighteenth-century melancholy, madness, and enthusiasm). Some of these sources are reprinted for the first time and may be of interest not only to art historians, but also to theologians, members of the Methodist Church, general historians, philologists or other scholars working on eighteenth-century England.

Although the book focuses on Enthusiasm Delineated, it invariably leads to new readings of the numerous other works by Hogarth. Literature on Methodism (rather than on Hogarth), for example, allows the preacher sitting next to Tom Idle in the prisoner's cart in Industry and Idleness, Pl. 11 (1747) to be identified as Silas Told (1711-1778). The same print, as a whole, may allude to traditional depictions of a Massacre of the Innocents. The study also shows the extent to which Hogarth's Sigismunda (1759) was influenced by the English Melancholy portrait tradition. A woodcut in Johannes de Ketham's Fasciculo di medicina (1493), depicting an anatomical lesson by Mondino de'Luzzi, can be identified as a direct model for The Reward of Cruelty (Pl. 4 of Hogarth's series The Four Stages of Cruelty; 1751). Fra Angelico's St. Stephen preaching and the Dispute before the Council (1447/50; Vatican, Cappella di Niccolo V) seems to be the model for both Paul before Felix (1748) and Paul before Felix Burlesqued (1751). Hogarth's early print, Masquerades and Operas (1724) has borrowed some motifs from a woodcut by Urs Graf (?) in Hans Heinrich Freiermut's Triumphus veritatis (1524). Hudibras catechized from Hogarth's Twelve Large Illustrations for Samuel Butler's 'Hudibras' (1726) may be a play on Lucas Cranach's Martyrdom of St. Jude Thaddaeus (c. 1512) or Poussin's Massacre of the Innocents (1628/30; Chantilly, Musée Condé). Cruelty in Perfection (1751) probably alludes to Anthony van Dyck's Capture of Christ (c. 1621; Madrid, Prado; repetition, c. 1629, Corsham Court, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery). Chairing the Members from Hogarth's Election series (c. 1754; Sir John Soane's Museum, London) may allude to some details in Raphael's Expulsion of Heliodorus (c. 1512; Stanza d'Eliodoro, Vatican). Dürer's Young Woman attacked by Death (Der Gewalttätige; c. 1494) is the model for Before (1736). Chapter 4.8.3 includes detailed comments on the iconographic backgound of the Harlot and the Rake series.

It should be noted that the study also touches upon a number of other aspects of Hogarth's art. Chapter 4.10.7 looks at dogs in Hogarth's oeuvre, and particularly at the howling Irish Setter in Enthusiasm Delineated. Chapter 4.10.8 explores the Sacrifice of Isaac theme in Hogarth's art, and chapter 6.5 Hogarth's church interiors. It is proposed, for example, that Plate 2 of Industry and Idleness (1747) depicts the interior of St. Peter's, Vere Street (formerly Marybone Chapel), and not of St. Martin-in-the-Fields whose box pews were not introduced into the body of the church until 1799. Apart from questions of content, the book also contains detailed formal analyses of Hogarth's art. Chapter 4.8.4 is about how Hogarth quite deliberately employed his "Line of Beauty (and Grace)" in several of his paintings. General remarks on the formal structure of Hogarth's paintings and engravings can be found in chapter 7. The use of linear perspective is touched upon here, as well as Hogarth's understanding of light and shadow. This chapter also goes into Hogarth's ironic use of the triangle motif.
All in all, the book is a social and cultural history of mid-eighteenth-century London rather than a monograph on a single Hogarth print.

ENGLISH TABLE OF CONTENTS Volume One PRELIMINARY NOTES 1 1. FACING THE PROBLEM 22 1.1. A Preacher Mocked 22 1.2. "A Timeless Print?" 23 1.3. The First Impression 24 1.4. The Grotesque in Enthusiasm Delineated 26 1.5. Hogarth's "Advertisement": A First Glance at the Artist's View 29 2. THE ANGLICAN CHURCH FROM HOGARTH'S POINT OF VIEW 30 2.1. Hogarth and the English Clergy 30 2.2. Excursion 1: The Eighteenth-Century Anglican Church 34 2.3. The Sleeping Congregation 42 3. THE PRINT'S FIRST LAYER OF MEANING: RELIGIOUS FANATICISM MOCKED 60 3.1. The Minister as Enthusiast 60 3.2. Excursion 2: George Whitefield and the Methodists 62 3.3. Enthusiasm Delineated: An Anti-Methodist Satire 83 3.3.1. Is that Whitefield in the Print? 83 3.3.2. The Preacher as a Fool 86 3.3.3. The World turned into Hell 93 3.3.4. The Meeting-Place: A Madhouse, a Prison or a "Tabernacle" Scene?104 3.3.5. The Lustful Congregation 120 3.3.6. The Nobleman and Whitefield 144 3.3.7. The Preacher as a Disguised Jesuit 149 3.3.8. The "Poor's Box": just a Mousetrap 154 3.3.9. Hogarth's Early Views on Methodism 158 3.3.10. "Humbly Dedicated to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury" 161 3.3.11. "A Methodist's Brain" 167 3.3.12. A Mohammedan as Observer 176 3.4. Short Summary 185 3.5. The Point of View has Slightly Changed: Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism 187 3.6. A Question Thrown In 219 4. THE HIDDEN MEANING OF THE PRINT: A CUTTING PARODY OF HIGH RELIGIOUS ART 222 4.1. Anti-Christian Motifs 222 4.2. Hogarth as Opponent of Sacred Art? 227 4.3. Hogarth versus the Old Masters: The Puppets of the Clergyman 231 4.3.1. God no longer the Almighty? 233 4.3.2. The Devil as the True Ruler of the World 237 4.3.3. Peter 242 4.3.4. Paul 244 4.3.5. Adam and Eve 246 4.3.6. Moses 252 4.3.7. Aaron 258 4.3.8. The Meaning of the Puppets 260 4.3.8.1. A Satire on Puppet-Shows of Old? 260 4.3.8.2. A Play on Baroque Pulpit Ornaments? 263 4.4. Excursion 3: The Eclectic Theory of Art 268 4.4.1. The Origin of the Eclectic Theory in Italy 269 4.4.2. The Movement of the Theories of "Imitation" from Italy to France 271 4.4.3. Eclecticism in Eighteenth-Century England 275 4.5. Eclecticism from Hogarth's Point of View: Borrowing from the Old Masters as an English artist's weapon against the false and antiquated doctrines of self-styled connoisseurs 286 4.6. Contemporary Public Opposition to Connoisseurs and Art Dealers 302 4.6.1. Essays and Plays in 1761 302 4.6.2. A Satire on Picture Auctions: The Real but Disguised Meaning of the Print 319 4.7. The Burlesque Tendency in Hogarth's Art 329 4.7.1. Reynolds's Idler: Forbidden Mixture of the High and Low in Art! 329 4.7.2. Hogarth's England and Dutch Art 333 4.7.3. The Dutch or "Vulgar" Element in Hogarth's Art 338 4.7.4. The "Test of Ridicule" 347 4.8. The Critics' Action and the Artist's Re-Action: Hogarth's Failure in High Art and his Revenge 352 4.8.1. Hogarth's Turn Away from the "Sublime": the Creation of his "Modern Moral Subjects" 352 4.8.2. Hogarth's Ploy: Borrowing from the Old Masters to Exalt Low Art? 361 4.8.3. Some Examples of Hogarth's Borrowing from the "Sublime" 364 4.8.4. Hogarth's "Anti-Iconography" as a Method of Exposing "Connoisseurs" 387 4.9. Excursion 4: English Iconoclastic Tradition 411 4.9.1. Three Principal Reformers from the Continent 414 4.9.2. Iconoclasm in Pre-Reformation England 417 4.9.3. The Iconoclastic Attitude of English Reformers 422 4.9.4. The Roman Catholic Reaction at the Council of Trent 428 4.9.5. Puritan Radicalism and the Oppression of Archbishop Laud's Conservatism 430 4.9.6. After the Restoration 438 4.9.7. The Question of "Images" in Hogarth's England 445 4.9.7.1. "Grand Tourists" and Continental Idolatry 445 4.9.7.2. Anglican Churchmen as Advocates of Pictures 449 4.9.7.3. The Opinion of British Artists, Critics, and Connoisseurs 452 4.9.7.4. The Pros and Cons of Representing God as an Old Man 464 4.9.7.5. Contemporary Discussion of Religious Art: The Ornaments of Churches Considered (1761) 470 4.10. Enthusiasm Delineated: The Motifs Parodied in the Lower Half of the Print 476 4.10.1. The Cherubim 477 4.10.2. The "Fallen Lady" 484 4.10.3. The Cowering Dark Woman Sitting in the Shade of the Clerk's Lectern 517 4.10.4. The Turk and the "Blessed Virgin" 531 4.10.5. The Jew 539 4.10.6. The "Mob" in the Back Pews 553 4.10.7. The Dog 561 4.10.8. Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac 575 4.10.9. Enthusiasm Delineated as an Anti-Eucharistic Demonstration 586 4.10.10. The Holy Spirit appearing in a Murderer's Brain 615 4.10.11. The Weeping Criminal: A Portrait of the Artist Theodore Gardelle 620 4.10.12. The Holy Ghost as a "mighty rushing Wind" 636 4.10.13. A Paradox: Sex, Crime and Protestant Religious Art 643 4.10.14. Enthusiasm Delineated as an Antitrinitarian, Polytheistic Work of Art 655 4.11. Short Summary 673 4.12. Who is the Clerk? 676 5. "ENTHUSIASM" AS "LEITMOTIF" 688 5.1. Eighteenth-Century "Enthusiasms" 688 5.2. The "Mental Thermometer" - A Scale of "Enthusiasm"? 708 5.3. Fine Arts Enthusiasm 728 5.4. A Call for Pulpit Enthusiasts 743 6. THE PULPITEER AS MOTIF IN ART: AN ICONOGRAPHIC SURVEY 755 6.1. Preacher-Motifs from Earliest Times to the End of Early Renaissance Art 755 6.2. Sixteenth-Century Preachers in anti-papist, didactic, genre and satirical Contexts 767 6.3. The Image of the Preacher in Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth-Century Art: Mainly Ecstatic? 783 6.4. Preachers in Eighteenth-Century English (and French) Art 800 6.5. Hogarth's Views of Church Interiors 805 6.6. Satires on Orator John Henley as Models for Hogarth's Preacher? 812 6.7. Short Summary 823 7. FORMAL ANALYSIS 825 7.1. The Pictorial Space 825 7.2. Brute, compulsive Vulgarity amidst angular Austerity 831 7.3. A Piercing Light: Hogarth's Playful Juxtaposition of Classical and Baroque Devices 840 7.4. The Total Negation of Classical Composition 853 7.5. Roger de Piles' Balance as Puppet-Show 873 7.6. Short Summary 877 8. CONCLUSION 879 Volume Two 9. SUMMARY FOR ENGLISH READERS 895 10. APPENDIX 905 10.1. Contemporary Sources 907 10.1.1. "Of Connoisseurs in Painting" 907 10.1.2. "Of Connoisseurs in Painting, Letter II" 912 10.1.3. "On the Exhibition of the Artists" 916 10.1.4. "Projected Exhibition of the Sign Painters" 919 10.1.5. The Life of Theodore Gardelle, Limner and Enameller 921 10.2. Bibliography 933 10.3. List of Illustrations 1011 10.4. Illustrations 1026 10.5. Index 1241-1469

For a revised and extended English version of chapter 7.5 of the book on Hogarth's Enthusiasm Delineated, see the online essay, "Upsetting the Balance: William Hogarth and Roger de Piles".

This essay proposes the hypothesis that the Irish artist James Hagarty (fl. 1762-1783), not Hogarth, was the leading artistic force behind Bonnell Thornton's parodic Sign Painters' Exhibition of 1762, and that Hogarth's involvements in court art and his turning away from "modern moral subjects" at the end of his life seems to have been one of the targets of the satirical exhibits presented at that show.

Bernd Krysmanski, "'O the Roast Beef of Old England': Hogarth in BSEfreier Zeit vor dem Tor von Calais", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 1997 [Saarbrücken: SDV, 1998], 29-52, 115, 178, 195, 217.

This is an extended version of a paper first read on 6 July, 1997 at the twentieth annual meeting of the Lichtenberg-Gesellschaft in Ober-Ramstadt (the birthplace of the famous German Hogarth commentator Georg Christoph Lichtenberg) on the occasion of Hogarth's tercentenary. It explains the nationalist implications of the English taste for roast beef and the Francophobe and antipapist sideswipes and puns in Hogarth's The Gate of Calais. The paper compares, in addition, the gate as shown in the picture with a traditional Gate of Hell and the contrasting motifs of a fat monk and meager French soldiers with Bosch's Gula and Bruegel's Poor and Rich Kitchen. It also includes a brief discussion of Steve Bell's political caricature of 1996 after Hogarth's print.

Bernd Krysmanski, "Patriotisches Rindfleisch, Pariser Pantinen und eine jakobitische Krähe: Ein auf Erkenntnissen von Katharina Braum fußender Nachtrag zu Hogarths 'Gate of Calais' nebst einer ergänzenden Hypothese von Elizabeth Einberg", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 1998 [Saarbrücken: SDV, 1999], 286-92.

Additional remarks on the foregoing essay, focusing on the Francophobe motif of wooden shoes and the crow sitting on the cross of the gate in Hogarth's painting of The Gate of Calais, and including a hitherto unpublished hypothesis by Elizabeth Einberg on the motif of the crow.

Bernd Krysmanski, "Hogarth's A Rake's Progress: An 'Anti-Passion' in Disguise", 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, 4 (1998), 137-82.

This is an enlarged version of a paper first delivered in September, 1993 at the Paul MellonCentre for Studies in British Art, London, on the occasion of a colloquium on English eighteenth and nineteenth-century art in recent German scholarship. The essay interprets the eight-picture Rake's Progress series as an allusion to the life of Christ. According to this reading, the first scene is the Raising of the Cross; the second the Flagellation; followed in Plate 3 by the Washing of the Feet at a rather "obscene" Last Supper. Scene 4 alludes to Hans Holbein's Noli me tangere and to the Soldiers drawing Lots for Jesus' Cloak; Plate 5 to a Florentine Marriage of the Virgin; followed in Plate 6 by a parody of Raphael's Transfiguration. The seventh scene may play on either the Repose of Christ or Christ's Imprisonment, with some details perhaps borrowed from a Temptation of St Antony or a Harrowing of Hell. The pictorial drama closes with the Lamentation of Scene 8.

Bernd Krysmanski, "Hogarth's 'A Rake's Progress' als 'Anti-Passion' Christi (Teil 1)", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 1998 [Saarbrücken: SDV, 1999], 204-42; and "Hogarths 'A Rake's Progress' als 'Anti-Passion' Christi: Ein Erklärungsversuch (Teil 2)", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 1999 [Saarbrücken: SDV, 2000], 113-60.

An extended and reorganized German version of the foregoing English essay, now published in two parts. Includes additional material in order to support the view that the whole Rake series alludes to the life of Christ. The second part evaluates in detail Hogarth's blasphemous tendency to profane traditional subjects of Christian iconography in his works, thereby interpreting this negative secularisation as deistic satire tinged with black humour, and as a "test of ridicule" aimed at the self-styled English connoisseurs.

Bernd Krysmanski, "We see a Ghost: Hogarth's Satire on Methodists and Connoisseurs", Art Bulletin, 80 (June 1998), 292-310.

This paper compares the Hogarth print, Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism (1762) with its rather different, unpublished first state, Enthusiasm Delineated (1761). The published version of the engraving is discussed as a satire on Methodist fanaticism. However, the first state, which is obscured by the second, is revealed as a polemic on shopworn academic French art theory and on a misplaced, even erotically passionate, enthusiasm for the Old Masters. See also Satires of William Hogarth: Two Prints on Religious Enthusiasm.

Bernd Krysmanski, "Lust in Hogarth's Sleeping Congregation - Or, How to Waste Time in Post-Puritan England", Art History, 21, no. 3 (September 1998), 393-408.

This contribution suggests that the overriding theme of the engraved version of The Sleeping Congregation is Hogarth's post-Puritan view of the old vice of Acedia (indolence or sloth). The essay shows that the print, in Hogarth's typical irony, updates a long pictorial and literary tradition of sleeping during a sermon; sleep, the characteristic signifier of indolence combined with lustful thoughts, a vice that a hard working and ambitious member of the rising middle-class such as Hogarth would have had little patience with. See also this pdf version of the essay.

Bernd Krysmanski, "Lichtenbergs Hogarth. Die Kalender-Erklärungen von Georg Christoph Lichtenberg mit den Nachstichen von Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen zu den Kupferstich-Tafeln von William Hogarth. Herausgegeben von Wolfgang Promies, München; Wien: Carl Hanser Verlag 1999", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 1999 [Saarbrücken: SDV, 2000], 257-68.

Lengthy review of Wolfgang Promies's annotated new edition of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's early Hogarth commentaries which first appeared between 1784 and 1796 in the Göttinger Taschen Calender. These interesting descriptions of Hogarth's satirical prints are not identical with Lichtenberg's famous Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche (1794-1799) and have never been translated into English. There is also a short, modified online version of this review essay.

Bernd Krysmanski, "Benjamin Ralph's School of Raphael (1759): Praise for Hogarth and a Direct Source for Reynolds", British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 24 (Spring 2001), 15-32.

Extended and elaborated version of a paper read on 26 July 1999 at the Tenth International Congress on the Enlightenment, University College, Dublin, 25-31 July 1999. The essay reconsiders the origin of one of Sir Joshua Reynolds's earliest published articles, which appeared in Samuel Johnson's Idler magazine in 1759 and parodied the self-styled "Connoisseur". Eager to find faults in Raphael's Cartoons, Reynolds's "Connoisseur" uses them to air his familiarity with academic rules and modern art theory, citing the "Line of Beauty and Grace", the need for variety, and the virtues of pyramidal design. To date, scholars have therefore presumed the essay to have been a direct response to the theories promoted by Hogarth in his Analysis of Beauty (1753).
The present study challenges this, with the examination of a less known book which appeared only four months before the Idler essay - Benjamin Ralph's The School of Raphael, or the Student's Guide to Expression in Historical Painting. The book was written for the use of all, like Hogarth's Analysis, and teaches skill and good taste by examples engraved after the Raphael Cartoons. It combines older academic ideas and "modern" theories promoted by Hogarth, dealing with contrast and variety in pictures, the pyramidal composition, and repeating Hogarth's exhortation to study nature and the "Line of Beauty".
It is unknown how well, if at all, Benjamin Ralph was acquainted with Hogarth. However, an etching of Four Heads from the Raphael Cartoons at Hampton Court, allegedly part of Hogarth's personal estate and released posthumously by his widow in 1781, hints at a direct contact between the two men, as these Heads resemble the illustrations in the second part of the School of Raphael.
Ralph's book promotes an unusual fusion of academic and Hogarthian terms. To Reynolds, such theories were an anathema. They were flawed and could not subsist together. Thus, it is suggested that Reynolds responded by parodying the new ideas in the dilettantish posturing of his "Connoisseur" in the Idler.

Bernd Krysmanski, "William Hogarths Kritik an der Balance des Peintres: Roger de Piles, Jonathan Richardson, Mark Akenside und Joseph Spence im Fadenkreuz der englischen Satire", in Joachim Möller (ed.), Sister Arts: Englische Literatur im Grenzland der Kunstgebiete, Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 2001, 51-75.

This paper further argues a point made in the author's book on Hogarth's Enthusiasm Delineated and the "We see a Ghost" essay. It interprets the preacher in Hogarth's Enthusiasm Delineated primarily as an art dealer, and, as he is weighing works by Raphael and Rubens, the favourite painters of Roger de Piles, reads the whole scene as an ironic allusion to de Piles's Balance des Peintres, the notorious "hit parade" guide for eighteenth-century connoisseurs of painting. This Balance, much admired by Jonathan Richardson, Mark Akenside and Joseph Spence, was ridiculed in mid-eighteenth-century England by Allan Ramsay and satirists like Laurence Sterne. The essay also includes a new interpretation of the two cherubim depicted in Hogarth's Enthusiasm Delineated.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

Survey of the major trends in modern Hogarth scholarship. Shows that many writers are ceding to the new historicism and socio-critical interpretations of Hogarth's life and art, or that they concentrate either on gender-specific standpoints or the text-image interrelationships.

The patient eye will discover, slipped as incidentals into some of the most unlikely scenes, Hogarth's satirical scope reaching the proverbial parts that decorum would avoid. True, Hogarth never depicted the human genitalia openly, as pornographic prints of the time did; but it seems that he had a malicious delight in lampooning via the genital, the priapic and privy in allusive form - not only in sexual contexts. In The March to Finchley, The Enraged Musician, in two of his Hudibras illustrations, or in Chairing the Members he depicted urinating boys or men. Such smutty motifs were expected only in "low" Dutch genre pictures at that time, and it is possible that in Hogarth's paintings and prints these motifs serve to characterize the low social milieu of his contemporaries.
In other cases animals' sex organs served Hogarth to reflect on human mores, as in the second scene of Marriage A-la-Mode, where a dog at the side of the rather worn-out Viscount ironically recalls his sexual activity of the previous night, or in The Sleeping Congregation, where the lustful thoughts of the whole congregation seem embodied in the shamelessly huge member of the lion of the royal arms emblazoned on the wall of the church.
Other objects could serve as well. In Enthusiasm Delineated the edging of a pulpit cushion alludes to the preacher's exhibitionist tendency. In the Emblematical Print of the South Sea Scheme the wooden horses of a merry-go-round are shaped like grotesque phalluses. In A Harlot's Progress a toppling pile of buckets (in the first scene) and the spilling of a glass of brandy (in the last scene) are close to an orgasmic match. In Noon a stone post of a London street, on top of which a little boy has broken a dish, insinuates a giant erect penis, the broken dish a symbol of defloration. In Evening the walking cane a little boy rides also looks like a phallus and symbolises infantile sexuality. In the first scene of Marriage A-la-Mode, the cannon shot shown in a Baroque portrait of an English Lord refers to the aristocrat's past potency. And the wooden sceptre of a naked masturbating mad "king" in the Bedlam scene of A Rake's Progress gives us to understand that sexual potency has taken the place of regal power.
We can also detect allusions to the female pudenda in some of Hogarth's prints, for instance, in Cunicularii in the curtains of a four-poster bed on which a woman lies in labour, or even in the mocked symbol of the Holy Trinity, which is shown turned upside down in The Sleeping Congregation.
Such hidden motifs suggest that the artist, apparently no child of sorrow, deliberately concealed ambiguous details in his pictures, not only with a moral purpose in mind, but also for his own and his viewers' titillation.

Parts of the volume are based on a paper read on 29 July 1999 at the Tenth International Congress on the Enlightenment, University College, Dublin, 25-31 July 1999. However, the book includes a more detailed analysis of the suggestive motifs in Hogarth's art and the presumedly libertine aspects of his life. Furthermore, Hogarth is shown here as a dark humorist who produced blasphemous motifs that satirically lambasted high religious art and debunked the eighteenth-century taste for Old Master work.

See also the reviews by Kate Grandjouan, Sean Shesgreen and Katherine Mannheimer. According to Shesgreen, "Hogarth's Hidden Parts is a volume of immense scholarship, based on exhaustive and thoughtful readings in the literature of art and social history (…). It is also a study of great breadth, both in the works Mr. Krysmanski analyzes and in the themes he treats, making it a small encyclopedia on Hogarth (as weIl as on his aesthetic and literary relationships). It is particularly strong in locating Hogarth in the context of European art (…); in all, the volume offers 304 images, some of them arcane and difficult to find. The book is carefully and exhaustively indexed (…). In all these respects, Hogarth's Hidden Parts stands as a lively, iconoclastic commentary that must be consulted and reckoned with by any serious art historian."

Biographical article written in German for the Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon (the new Thieme-Becker). Includes a list of museums and galleries exhibiting paintings by Hogarth and bibliographical references.

Bernd Krysmanski, "Warnings of Morality or Downright Twisted Pleasure? William Hogarth's Depiction of Violence", in Kassandra Nakas / Jessica Ullrich (eds.), Scenes of the Obscene: The Non-Representable in Art and Visual Culture, Middle Ages to Today, Kromsdorf / Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2014, 37-63.

Shows that Hogarth's depictions of violent details, which have often been interpreted as heartfelt didactic warnings of moral value, can equally be understood as platforms of sadistic delight and rapture instilling in beholders frissons of harm, torment or sexual abuse, as the many participants in violent action, enjoyment of horror films and brutal computer gaming do today. It is possible to surmise that Hogarth, as a shrewd observer of London's brutal and bloody world, liked such scenes, which were considered sublime by eighteenth-century critics such as the Abbé Du Bos, Edmund Burke and Denis Diderot.

Bernd Krysmanski, "Der pädophile Adelsspross: Warum die arrangierte Ehe 'nach der Mode' scheitern musste. Eine Neubewertung von Hogarths Marriage A-la-Mode aus sexualgeschichtlicher Sicht zum 250jährigen Todestag des Künstlers", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 2013 [Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2015], 57-141.

Detailed new interpretation of the Marriage A-la-Mode series from a sexual point of view. Shows that it was primarily the freely lived paedophilia of Viscount Squanderfield that gave the impetus for the infidelity of his wife and led to the failure of the arranged marriage. Suggests that the Viscount must have infected his wife's child, whose malformations seem to be the result of Down's syndrome, with syphilis by sexual abuse.

Text in German and English. Shows that none of the extant portraits of Frederick the Great depict the true appearance of the Prussian king and that it was Hogarth who produced the only accurate contemporary representation of the monarch. Suggests that in scene 4 of Marriage A-la-Mode Frederick II is depicted as a gay flautist, with a prominent aquiline nose, accompanying a homosexual castrato on his German flute and mocking a paedophilic lord. It is even more astonishing that Hogarth outed the Prussian king as gay as early as 1744, earlier than any other published document or picture. See also the reviews by Giles MacDonogh and Melvyn New.

Bernd Krysmanski, "Lust an der Gewalt? Brutalität und Grausamkeit in Hogarths Bildern", Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 2014 [Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2016], 79-114.

Revised German version of the author's paper, "Warnings of Morality or Downright Twisted Pleasure? William Hogarth's Depiction of Violence" (see above). Includes more and better illustrations than the English version.

Bernd Krysmanski, "A Harlot's Progress von William Hogarth: Aufstieg und Fall einer Hure. Der Forschungsstand für deutsche Leser". Online Essay, The Site for Research on William Hogarth, 2016 (updated 2022).

Explanation of the six prints of A Harlot's Progress for German readers. Includes many illustrations not to be found elsewhere and extensive bibliographical references.

Bernd Krysmanski, "Nur Hogarth zeigt den Alten Fritz wahrheitsgemäß mit krummem ‘Zinken’ – die uns vertrauten Bilder von Pesne bis Menzel tun dies nicht", in Maria Effinger et al. (eds.), Von analogen und digitalen Zugängen zur Kunst: Festschrift für Hubertus Kohle zum 60. Geburtstag (Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net, 2019), 83-116.

Revised and substantially enlarged version of a paper given at the Haus der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte, Potsdam, on 4 April 2018. Shows that none of the well-known portraits of Frederick the Great depict the true likeness of the Prussian king, arguing that it was only Hogarth in scene 4 of Marriage A-la-Mode who represented the true appearance of Frederick's face with its ruddy complexion as known to the people around him.

Bernd Krysmanski, "Does Hogarth Depict Old Fritz Truthfully with a Crooked Beak? – The Pictures Familiar to Us from Pesne to Menzel Don't Show This" Online Essay, ART-dok (Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net, 2022), 1-46.

Slightly revised English version of the aforementioned essay.

Return to The Site for Research on William Hogarth.