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A HISTORY of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY in 50 OBJECTS Edited by CLAUDY OP DEN KAMP and DAN HUNTER 5 Hogarth Engraving Michael Punt

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A HISTORY of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY in 50 OBJECTS Edited by CLAUDY OP DEN KAMP and DAN HUNTER 5 Hogarth Engraving Michael Punt University of Plymouth PEARL https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk Faculty of Arts and Humanities School of Art, Design and Architecture 2019-05-31 Hogarth Engraving: William Hogarth the Man Who Copyrighted Himself Punt, M http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/13721 10.1017/9781108325806.006 Cambridge University Press All content in PEARL is protected by copyright law. Author manuscripts are made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the details provided on the item record or document. In the absence of an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher or author. A HISTORY OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN 50 OBJECTS Edited by CLAUDY OP DEN KAMP and DAN HUNTER 5 Hogarth Engraving Michael Punt ILLIAM HOGARTH (1697–1764) was, iniquity. It meant that those with the means Wlike Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) be- to propagate an English national style were fore him, an artist whose work represents besotted to the aesthetics and values of a set of ideas that are both indicative of the Italian Renaissance. To challenge his period and transferable to the present. this, Hogarth devoted his painting and Their significance is such that we describe image-making to important moral state- things as “Hogarthian” or “Swiftian,” ments. He made images that were power- and the periods in which they lived saw ful interventions in the disputes between dra matic social, economic, and political artists and their critics about taste; debates change, in which the power of art to ex- that had been conducted to this point only press and marshal political criticism has by prominent and wealthy individuals, in a rarely been matched. The biting satires of closed discourse. He opened out the debate Swift and Hogarth were advance warning by a familiar artistic tactic. He used the of the political turmoil of the period, a precise and particular observation of the tumult that would boil over across Europe everyday to speak of a general condition. and spill into the United States of America. His style was to construct analogies in a Before 1735, artists and engravers such visual language of caricature and lampoon, as Hogarth did not enjoy legal protection and he was able to summon the aesthetic for their works and were, thus, open to ex- of the everyday to connect with the expe- ploitation by print sellers who simply cop- rience of the viewer in ways that inspired ied popular images if the original engravers moral reflection, as well as political ac- held out for too high a price. Hogarth and tion. His paintings, and the subsequent his fellow artists lobbied parliament to re- engravings that he made of them, aspire vise copyright laws to protect their images, neither to the nostalgic depiction of a lost and this can be seen as merely an act of civilization, nor to a frisson of the sensual financial necessity. But the effect of these license of the arts of the French Court. changes were more important politically Instead, Hogarth presented arguments in than this reading would indicate: extend- vernacular images. ing copyright protections to satirists like The directness of his language, the clar- Hogarth meant that he could use them to ity of his intention, and the relevance of develop vivid visual political analogies, his work to the daily experience of his cli- whose potency become stronger through entele made Hogarth a valuable target for wide publication and even wider reuse. exploitative print-sellers. At the beginning Hogarth initially had ambitions to be of Hogarth’s working life, engravers’ work taken seriously as a history painter, but had no protections. Thus, print-sellers of found that the market for such works was the day were able to operate an abusive led by an aristocracy whose taste was in- publishing business model, commissioning formed by a style from an earlier age. For copyists to make cheap copies of his work him this was not just a rejection of his style in ways that undercut Hogarth’s credibil- and oeuvre, but also a social and political ity as an artist, diminished his aesthetic project and, of course, diluted his share how it was organized. It was widely read, of the market. This was not personal, it and sparked considerable controversy, even was a widespread practice that yielded animosity. Its key assertion was that the profits to the print-sellers, at the expense most elegant and beautiful is in the world of the originating engravers and poorly and, in that world, there is the recurrent paid copyists alike. motif of the serpentine line. Wherever one Hogarth was understandably aggrieved troubled to look, the line was there. To by this state of affairs, and his injury was confirm this, he presented two large en- made more acute by the fact that the status gravings along with a frontispiece that in- of artists and engravers was very different cluded a serpentine line: Plate I, depicting a from novelists and authors, who had en- dance, and Plate II, a sculptor’s yard. Both joyed copyright protection for more than plates follow the same arrangement of a two decades. Not only was this unjust in centerpiece surrounded by small numbered principle, it was financially crippling, and illustrations in boxes. The serpentine line inconsistent with Hogarth’s desire to create is instrumental in the central composition a new, English style of art. He threw his of the two plates, and it flows through both weight behind the cause of law reform scenes, as well as appearing in several of to give artists similar parliamentary pro- the numbered boxes. Details in the images tection to that enjoyed by authors. In the and boxes are referred to by Hogarth in end he was successful, and the Engrav- the text as though they are diagrams; but, ers’ Copyright Act of 1734 extended to independently, the plates also articulate the engravers of original work a number of philosophical and political argument of the protections that had applied to novels the text using specific social and historical for years. references. The densely coded iconography To coincide with the beginning of the of these engravings has been the subject of Act’s operation, on 25 June 1735 Hogarth much scholarship and interpretation, and released a series of engravings of his cy- Ronald Paulson’s authoritative reading of cle of paintings called The Rake’s Progress. the engravings gives some indication of the The new laws meant that he was able, complexity of the philosophical commen- for the first time, to bypass (what he re- tary and critique within and between the garded as) the extortion of the print-sellers. images. The capacity of these engravings The response of the sellers was immedi- to carry such an argument is a measure ate, forceful, and devious: they published both of the intellectual importance of the crude copies of the engravings in order to image in the 18th century and of Hogarth’s undermine the novelty of his work. But the command of its visual rhetoric. copies lacked Hogarth’s crisp observation The Analysis of Beauty is a complex set of the particular, from which general moral of ideas that occupied Hogarth for many messages could be understood. The coun- years. Its most potent and recurring mo- terfeit works were unsuccessful, and the tif, the serpentine line, appears nearly a engravings of The Rake’s Progress returned decade earlier in the 1745 self-portrait, a handsome profit to Hogarth, allowing The Painter and His Pug. This image, as the him to operate with both political vigor underpainting reveals, was begun in the and some financial security. middle of the 1730s as a relatively formal In this way, the Engravers’ Copyright Act self-portrait of Hogarth as a well-dressed 1734 was a necessary precursor to the de- 18th-century gentleman. But progres sively, velopment of English art. The successes it seems, a more artisanal depiction de- that followed The Rake’s Progress—and the veloped, that of the artist as a person of confidence engendered by his new legal sensitivity and candor. The formal cloth- rights—allowed Hogarth to produce a ing gives way to a cap, and the intangible treatise that challenged the regressive aspects of the character are offered not orthodoxies of taste of his time. This trea- by fashion but by a witty commentary tise, entitled The Analysis of Beauty, was pub- offered through the pose of his favorite lished in 1753. In six important principles dog, called Trump. In 1749 Hogarth made it set out where beauty was to be found and a print after the painting in which the artist’s appearance is captured in an oval his rhetorical skills to sheer temper. What- painting behind his dog, who takes the ever the reason, the most striking figure in foreground to both contemplate and guard this engraving is Trump, the beloved pug the line of beauty resting lightly on the art- who, now apparently more distracted by ist’s palette. The image, entitled Gulielmus his own thoughts, urinates on Churchill’s Hogarth, represents the work of an artist at manuscript. Trump, the established avatar the top of his game, and it’s little surprise of the artist, manages to both insult and that he later used the engraving as the ignore his enemy’s epistle at the same time. frontispiece to a published album of his Whatever the state of mind Hogarth collected works. In the four years between was in when he modified his triumphal the painting and the engraving, the artist self-portrait and turned it into The Bruiser, seems to have become more relaxed (and the complete appropriation of the artist by younger), in direct proportion to the dog’s his analogy in the form of Trump reveals more troubled demeanor, as he appears a belief in the endurance of an image as to bear the burden of his master’s inner the property of its creator.
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