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William Hogarth

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hogarth, William, 1697-1764

[Analysis of beauty]

Aestheticism in art / William Hogarth. -- [New edition].

Includes index.

1. Aesthetics--Early works to 1800. I. Title.

BH181.H6 2013

701’.17--dc23

2012051018

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No part of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers, artists, heirs or estates. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case, we would appreciate notification.

ISBN: 978-1-78310-792-6

William Hogarth

Aestheticism

in Art

CONTENTS

Introduction

General Rules of Composition

Of Fitness

Of Variety

Of Uniformity, Regularity or Symmetry

Of Simplicity, or Distinctness

Of Intricacy

Of Quantity

Mastering of Lines

Of Lines

Of What Sort of Parts, and How Pleasing Forms Are Composed

Of Composition with the Waving-Line

Of Compositions with the Serpentine-Line

Light, Shadows and Colours

Of Proportions

Of Light and Shade, and the Manner in which Objects are Explained to the Eye by Them

Of Composition, with Regard to Light, Shade and Colour

Of Colouring

Positioning of the Human Figure in Compositions

Of the Face

Of Attitude

Of Action

Hogarth’s Life

Index

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, The Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, known as La Belle Jardinière, 1507-1508.

Oil on wood, 122 x 80 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Introduction

If a preface was ever necessary, it may very likely be thought so for the following work; the title of which (in the proposals published some time since) have greatly amused and raised expectations of the curious, though not without a mixture of doubt, that its purpose could ever be satisfactorily fulfilled. For, despite the fact that beauty is seen and confessed by all, from the many fruitless attempts to account for the cause of its being so, enquiries on this subject have almost been sacrificed; and the subject generally thought to be a matter of too high and too delicate a nature to admit of any true or intelligible discussion. Something, therefore, introductory ought to be offered upon the presenting of a work with a face so entirely new, especially as it will naturally encounter, and perhaps even overthrow, several long-received, thorough and established opinions. Since controversies may arise, how far, and after what manner, does this subject have to go to be considered and treated fairly? It will also be proper to lie before the reader what may be understood from the works of both ancient and modern writers and painters.

It is no wonder that this subject was considered inexplicable for so long, as the nature of many parts of it cannot possibly come within the reach of mere men with pens; otherwise those ingenious gentlemen who have published treatises about it (and who wrote much more learnedly than can be expected from one who never took up the pen before) would not so soon have been bewildered in their accounts of it and obliged so suddenly to turn into the broad and more beaten path of moral beauty, in order to extricate themselves from the difficulties they seem to have met with in this. What’s more, they were forced for the same reasons to amuse their readers with amazing (but often misapplied) encomiums on deceased painters and their performances, wherein they continually discoursed effects instead of developing causes. After much flattery, in very pleasing language, one is fairly set down just from where they were picked up, honestly confessed to that in terms of grace, the main point in question, the men do not even pretend to know anything of the matter. And, indeed, how should they? A practical knowledge of the whole art of panting (sculpture alone not being sufficient) is required and, to some degree of eminence; it would be difficult for anyone to pursue the chain of this inquiry through all its parts offhand; however, it is my hope that all will be understood following this work.

Guido di Pietro, known as Fra Angelico, Christ Glorified in the Court of Heaven (predella of the altarpiece of San Domenico in Fiesole), c. 1423-1424.

Tempera on panel, 31.7 x 73 cm. The National Gallery, London.

Naturally one might wonder why the best painters within these two centuries, who, according to their works, appear to have excelled in grace and beauty, should have been so silent in an affair of such seeming importance to the imitative arts and their own honour. To this, I say, that it is probable that they arrived at that excellence in their works by the mere dint of imitating with great exactness the beauties of nature, and by often copying and retaining strong ideas of graceful antique statues which might sufficiently serve their purposes as painters without troubling themselves with a further inquiry into the particular causes of the effects before them. Is it not a little strange that the great Leonardo da Vinci (amongst the many philosophical precepts which he hath at random laid down in his treatise on painting) did not give the lead hint of anything tending to a system of this kind, especially as he was a contemporary of Michelangelo, who is said to have discovered a certain principle in the trunk of an antique statue (which became well known from this circumstance by the name of Michelangelo’s Torso, or Back), a principle which gave his works a grandeur of gusto equal to the most highly acclaimed antiques. Relative to which tradition, Lomazzo, who wrote about painting at the same time, has this remarkable passage (vol. I, book I):

And because in this place there falleth out a certain precept of Michelangelo much for our purpose, I will not concede it, leaving the further interpretation and understanding thereof to the judicious reader. It is reported, then, that Michelangelo once upon a time gave this observation to painter Marcus di Siena his scholar: that he should always make a figure pyramidal, serpent-like and multiplied by one, two, and three. In which precept (in my opinion) the whole mystery of art consists. For the greatest grace and life that a picture can have is that it express motion, which the painters call the spirit of a picture. Now there is no form so fit to express this motion as that of the flame of fire, which, according to Aristotle and the other philosophers, is an element most active of all others because the form of the flame makes it most apt for motion. It has a conus or sharp point with which it seems to divide the air, so that it may ascend to its proper sphere. A picture having this form will be most beautiful.

Many writers since Lomazzo have, in the same words, recommended observing this rule as well without comprehending the meaning of it, for unless it were known systematically, the whole business of grace could not be understood. Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy, in his Art of Painting, says: “large flowing, gliding outlines which are in waves, give not only a grace to the part, but to the whole body; as we see in Antinous, and in many other antique figures: a fine figure and its parts ought always to have a serpent-like and flaming form. Naturally those sort of lines have I know not what of life and seeming motion in them, which very much resembles the activity of the flame and the serpent.” Now if he had understood what he had said, he could not, speaking of grace, have expressed himself in the following contradictory manner. “But to say the truth, this is a difficult undertaking, and a rare gift, which the artist rather receives from the hand of heaven than from his own industry and studies.”But Roger de Piles, in his Lives of Painters, is still more contradictory, when he says “that a painter can only have [grace] from nature, and does not know that he has it, nor in what degree, nor how exactly he communicates it to his works; and that grace and beauty are two different things. Beauty pleases by the rules, and grace gets by without them.”

All the English writers on this subject have echoed these passages; hence Je ne sais quoi has become a fashionable phrase as a reference to grace. Due to this, it is plain that this precept which Michelangelo delivered so long ago in an oracle-like manner has remained mysterious down to this time, for anything that has appeared to the contrary. The wonder that it should do so will, to some degree, lessen when we come to consider that it must have appeared all along as full of contradiction as the most obscure quibble ever delivered at Delphos, because winding lines are as often the cause of deformity as of grace the solution of which, in this place, would be an anticipation of what the reader will find at large in the body of the work. There are also strong prejudices in favour of straight lines, as constituting true beauty in the human form, where they never should appear. A middling connoisseur thinks no profile has beauty without a very straight nose, and if the forehead be continued straight with it, he thinks it is still more sublime. I have seen miserable scratches with the pen sell at a considerable rate for only having in them a side face or two. The common notion that a person should be straight as an arrow, and perfectly erect, is of this kind. If a dancing-master were to see his scholar in the easy and gracefully-turned attitude of the Antinous, he would cry shame on him, and tell him he looked as crooked as a ram’s horn, and bid him hold up his head as he himself did.

Giorgio Vasari, Portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent, 1533.

Oil on canvas, 90 x 72 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

Guido di Pietro, known as Fra Angelico, Coronation of the Virgin, c. 1420.

Tempera and gold on panel, 27 x 37.2 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland.

Andrea Mantegna, Saint Sebastian, c. 1480.

Tempera on canvas, 255 x 140 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

The painters, in a similar manner, by their works, seem to be no less divided upon the subject than the authors. The French, except such as have imitated the antique, or the Italian school, seem to have studiously avoided the serpentine line in all their pictures, especially Anthony Coypel, historical painter, and Hyacinthe Rigaud, principal portrait painter to Louis XIV. Rubens, whose manner of designing was quite original, made use of a large flowing line as a principle, which runs through all his works, and gives a noble spirit to them; but he did not seem to be acquainted with what we call the precise line; which from now on we will be very particular about, and which gives the delicacy we see in the best Italian masters; rather he charged his contours in general with too bold and S-like swellings. Raphael, from a straight and stiff manner, suddenly changed his taste of lines at the sight of Michelangelo’s works and antique statues; and he was so fond of the serpentine line that he carried it into a ridiculous excess, particularly in his draperies. However, his great observance of nature ensured that he did not continue this mistake for very long. Peter de Cortone formed a fine manner in his draperies of this line. We see this principle best understood in some pictures of Correggio, particularly his Juno and Ixion, yet the proportions of his figures are sometimes such as might be corrected by a common sign painter. Whilst Albert Dürer, who drew mathematically, never so much as deviated into grace, which he must sometimes have done in copying from life, if he had not been fettered with his own impracticable rules of proportion. But that which may have puzzled this matter most may be that Anthony van Dyck, one of the best portrait painters in most respects ever known, plainly appears not to have had a thought of this kind. For there seems not to be the least grace in his pictures more than what life chanced to bring before him. There is a print of the Duchess of Wharton engraved by Van Gunft, from a true picture by him, which is thoroughly diverted of every elegance. Now, had he known this line as a principle, he could no more have drawn all the parts of this picture so contrary to it, than Mr Addison could have written a whole spectator in false grammar; unless it were done on purpose. However, on account of his other great excellencies, painters chose to stile this want of grace in his attitudes, simplicity, etc., and they often, very justly, merit that epithet.

Guido di Pietro, known as Fra Angelico, Saint Peter Preaching in the Presence of Saint Mark, c. 1433.

Tempera on panel, 39 x 56 cm. Museo di San Marco, Florence.

Nor were the painters of these times less uncertain and contradictory to each other, than the masters already mentioned, whatever they may pretend to the contrary. Of this I felt certain, and therefore, in the year 1745, published a frontispiece to my engraved works, in which I drew a serpentine line laying on a painter’s palette, with these words under it, the line of beauty. The bait soon took; and no Egyptian hieroglyphic was ever amused over more than they were after this time, painters and sculptors came to me to know the meaning of it, equally puzzled about it as other people, until it came to have some explanation. At that time, and no sooner, some found it to be an old acquaintance of theirs, though the account they could give of its properties was as very near to satisfactory as that which a day-labourer who constantly uses the lever, could give of that machine as a mechanical power. Others, such as common face-painters and copiers of pictures, denied that there could be such a rule either in art or nature, and asserted it was all fluff and madness; but no wonder that these gentlemen should not be ready in comprehending a thing they have little or no business with. For though the picture-copier may sometimes to a common eye seem to vie with the original he copies, the artist himself requires no more ability, genius, or knowledge of nature than a journeyman-weaver at the goblins, who in working after a piece of painting, bit by bit, scarcely knows what he is about, whether he is weaving a man or a horse, yet at last almost insensibly turns out of his loom a fine piece of tapestry, representing, perhaps, one of Alexander’s battles painted by Le Brun.

As the above-mentioned print thus involved me in frequent disputes by explaining the qualities of the line, I was extremely glad to find it (which I had conceived as only part of a system in my mind) so well supported by the above precept of Michelangelo, which was first pointed out to me by Dr Kennedy, learned antiquarian and connoisseur from whom I afterwards purchased the translation, from which I have taken several passages for my purpose. Let us now endeavour to discover what light antiquity throws upon the subject in question.

Egypt first, later followed by Greece, manifested their great skill in arts and sciences through their works, and among the rest, painting and sculpture, all of which are thought to have been issued from their great schools of philosophy. Pythagoras, Socrates, and Aristotle seem to have pointed out the right road in nature for the study of the painters and sculptors of those times (which they, in all probability, afterwards followed the nicer paths that their particular professions required them to pursue) as may be reasonably collected from the answers given by Socrates to Aristotole his disciple, and Parrhasius the painter, concerning fitness, the first fundamental law in nature with regard to beauty. I am in some measure saved the trouble of collecting a historical account of these arts among the ancients, by accidentally meeting with a preface to a tract called the Beau Ideal: this treatise was written by Lambert Hermanson Ten Kate, in French, and translated into English by James Christopher Leblon, who in that preface says, speaking of the author:

His superior knowledge, that I am now publishing, is the product of the analogy of the ancient Greeks or the true key for finding all harmonious proportions in painting, sculpture, architecture, music, etc. brought home to Greece by Pythagoras. After this great philosopher travelled into Phoenicia, Egypt, and Chaldea, where he conversed with the learned, he returned to Greece around Anno Mundi 3484, before 520 CE, and brought with him many excellent discoveries and improvements for the good of his countrymen, among which the analogy was one of the most considerable and useful.

After him, the Grecians, with the help of this analogy, began (and not before) to surpass other nations in sciences and arts; for whereas before this time they represented their Divinities in plain human figures, the Grecians now began to enter into the Beau Ideal; and Pamphilus, (who flourished in AM 3641, before 363 CE, who taught that no man could excel in painting without mathematics) the scholar of Pausias and master of Apelles, was the first who artfully applied the said analogy to the art of painting; at about the same time as the sculptors, the architects, etc. began to apply it to their several arts, without which science the Grecians remained as ignorant as their forefathers. They carried on their improvements in drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, etc. until they became the wonders of the world; especially after the Asians and Egyptians (who were formerly the teachers of the Grecians) had, in process of time and by the havoc of war, lost all the excellency in the sciences and arts. Due to this, all other nations were afterwards obliged to the Grecians without being able to so much as imitate them.

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, Sistine Madonna, 1512-1513.

Oil on canvas, 269.5 x 201 cm. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.

Diego Velázquez, The Toilet of Venus or The Rokeby Venus, c. 1647-1651.

Oil on canvas, 122.5 x 177 cm. The National Gallery, London.

Diego Velázquez, Prince Baltasar Carlos on Horseback, c. 1635.

Oil on canvas, 211.5 x 177 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

For when the Romans conquered Greece and Asia, and brought the best paintings and the finest artists to Rome, we don’t find they discovered the great key of knowledge, the analogy I speak of now; but their best performances were conducted by Grecian artists, who it seems cared not to communicate their secret of the analogy because they either intended to be necessary in Rome by keeping the secret amongst themselves, or else the Romans, who principally affected universal dominion, were not curious enough to search after the secret, not knowing its importance, nor understanding that, without it, they could never attain the excellency of the Grecians. Nevertheless, it must be known that the Romans used well the proportions, which the Grecians long before had reduced to certain fixed rules according to their ancient analogy; and the Romans were able to successfully use the proportions without comprehending the analogy itself.

This account agrees with what is constantly observed in Italy, where the Greek and Roman works, both in medals and statues, are as distinguishable as the characters of the two languages.

As the preface had thus been of service to me, I was in hopes from the title of the book (and the assurance of the translator, that the author had by his great learning discovered the secret of the ancients,) to have met with something there that might have assisted, or confirmed, the scheme I had in hand; but was much disappointed in finding nothing of the sort and no explanation, or even after-mention of what at first agreeably alarmed me, the word analogy. I have given the reader a specimen, in his own words, how far the author has discovered this grand secret of the ancients, or great key of knowledge, as the translator calls it:

The sublime part that I so greatly esteem, and of which I have begun to speak, is a real Je ne sais quoi, or an unaccountable something to most people, and it is the most important part to all the connoisseurs. I shall call it a harmonious propriety, which is a touching or moving unity, or a pathetic agreement or concord, not only of each member to its body, but also of each part to which the member belongs. It is also an infinite variety of parts; however conformable, with respect to each different subject so that all the attitude and all the adjustment of the draperies of each figure ought to answer or correspond to the subject chosen. Briefly, it is a true decorum, a bienseance or a congruent disposition of ideas, as much for the face and stature as for the attitudes. A bright genius, in my opinion, who aspires to excel in the ideal, should propose this to himself, such has been the principal study of the most famous artists. It is in this part that the great masters cannot be imitated or copied except by themselves, or by those that are advanced in the knowledge of the ideal, and who are as knowing as those masters in the rules or laws of the picturesque and poetical nature, although inferior to the masters in the high spirit of invention.

William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode: 2, The Tête a Tête, c. 1743.

Oil on canvas, 69.9 x 90.8 cm. The National Gallery, London.

The words in this quotation, “It is also an infinite variety of parts”, seem at first to have some meaning in them, but it is entirely destroyed by the rest of the paragraph, and all the other pages are filled, according to custom, with descriptions of pictures.

Now, as everyone has a right to conjecture what this discovery of the ancients might be, it will be my business to show it was a key to the thorough knowledge of variety both in form and movement. Shakespeare, who had the deepest penetration into nature, has summed up all the charms of beauty in two words, ‘infinite variety’; where, speaking of Cleopatra’s power over Anthony, he says, “Nor custom stale / Her infinite variety” (Act 2, Scene 3). It has been ever observed that the ancients made their doctrines mysterious to the vulgar, and kept them secret from those who were not of their particular sects and societies by means of symbols and hieroglyphics. Lomazzo says: “The Grecians, in imitation of antiquity, searched out the truly renowned proportion wherein the exact perfection of most exquisite beauty and sweetness appeared; dedicating the fame in a triangular glass unto Venus the goddess of divine beauty, from whence all the beauty of inferior things is derived.” (chap. 29, book. 1). If we suppose this passage to be authentic, may we not also imagine it probable that the symbol in the triangular glass might be similar to the line Michelangelo recommended? Thus especially, if it can be proved, that the triangular form of the glass and the serpentine line itself are the two most expressive figures that can be thought of to signify not only beauty and grace, but the whole order of form.

There is a circumstance in the account Pliny gives of Apelles’ visit to Protogenes, which strengthens this supposition. I hope I may have leave to repeat the story. Apelles, having heard of the fame of Protogenes, went to Rhodes to pay him a visit. However, upon not finding him at home, Apelles asked for a board on which he drew a line, thus telling the maid servant that the line would signify to her master who had been to see him. We are not clearly told what sort of a line it was that could so particularly signify one of the first of his profession: if it was only a stroke (though as fine as a hair, as Pliny seems to think) it could not possibly, by any means, denote the abilities of a great painter. However, if we suppose it to be a line of some extraordinary quality, such as the serpentine line will appear to be, Apelles could not have left a more satisfactory signature of the compliment he had paid him. Protogenes, upon coming home, took the hint and drew a finer or rather more expressive line within it, to show Apelles, if he came again, that he understood his meaning. Apelles, soon returning, was well pleased with the answer Protogenes had left for him, by which he was convinced that fame had done him justice, and so correcting the line again, perhaps, by making it more precisely elegant, he took his leave. The story thus may be reconciled to common sense, which, as it has been generally received could never be understood but as a ridiculous tale.

Let us add to this that there is scarce an Egyptian, Greek, or Roman deity that does not have a twisted serpent, cornucopia, or some other symbol winding in this manner to accompany it. The two small heads over the bust of the Hercules, of the goddess Isis, one crowned with a globe between two horns, the other with a lily, are of this kind. Harpocrates, the god of silence, is still more remarkably so, having a large twisted horn growing out of the side of his head, a cornucopia in his hand, and another at his feet, with his finger placed on his lips indicating secrecy. It is equally remarkable that the deities of barbarous and gothic nations never had, even to this day, any of these elegant forms of their own.