Q2. Choosing a
particular period from 1750 to the present, in what ways
has illustration responded to the changing and cultural forces of that period?
The Georgian period, 1714-1837, was a time of progress and
change in industry and culture. Transport and mass production were advancing
and factories had led to a ‘material culture’. Now the majority of society
could purchase goods which were once exclusively for the upper classes.
Visitors and immigrants, moving to the city for exciting sights and reliable work,
bought new culture into London, as well as a young population, eager to
experience the changing culture. At a time with no television or radio,
illustrators played an important role in creating instructions, news stories,
entertainment, and advertisements; they were essential to the changing culture
and responded to it, acting as a fundamental part of communication to the
masses. “During the 19th century there was a huge rise in the urban
population, literacy, new inventions such as the steam press, cheap books,
periodicals, and new political views” (Wigan, 2006, p.68); these all
contributed to the success and effectiveness of the Georgian illustrator.
This essay presents how the changing and cultural forces of
the Georgian period resulted in illustrations that acted as news stories; factual,
biased and satirical, portraying contemporary opinions on the events of the
time. Successful illustrators and printmakers during the Georgian period were
powerful as the message they chose to portray could be communicated within
seconds after viewing. For the first time print could be spread easily and
cheaply. Many social venues such as coffeehouses and taverns placed these
prints on their walls; sparking much debate and communicating the message to a
wide range of visitors from across society.
One particular Georgian illustrator, Hogarth, visually
symbolised and represented the culture and social change of the time in his
work. Hogarth commented on the “morals of the modern world and raised the
international status of British art with his complex depictions of British
types and stereotypes”. He had a “well developed social conscience, his work
highlighted the social ills of the contemporary world” and he used satires to
parody society.
In Gin Lane and Beer Street (1751), Hogarth “bought the
issues of the day directly to the public and poked fun at the country he hated”,
the same country that had bought gin: France (Hawksley,2011, p.18/19). They are
a moralising set of prints, portraying, in one, the strength of the working
class, beer and the benignity of English life, and in the other, poverty, gin
and the evils of France. Hogarth was responding to the changing culture of alcohol
production and consumption: by 1750, half of wheat harvest went to produce gin.
Low prices, availability and strength led it to become popular. This was named
the ‘Gin Craze’. At a time of both great
luxury and poverty, much of society believed that being poor was a choice: that
they prioritised drinking, gambling and were lazy. Hogarth’s illustration
suggested that gin was a social crisis itself, a distraction from their
horrific conditions, the cause, rather than the result, of poverty, crime,
death and madness. Hogarth discouraged the public from drinking gin by presenting
this in his illustrations: in Gin Lane
a lunatic cavorts in the street hitting himself with a pair of bellows, while
holding a baby, impaled on a spike.
These two prints were influenced by Hogarth’s friend,
Fielding, turning “from satirical wit... [to] a more cutting examination of
crime and punishment... at the same time Fielding was approaching the subject
in literature” (Hallett, Riding, 2006, p.181). Paulson (1993, p.17) thinks it
is likely that they planned the literature and imagery together as a campaign. Beer Street was used to promote the
industrial success of England and its native beer; Gin Lane used to deter the audience from drinking gin and
forgetting God.
Gin Lane reflects
the changing ‘gin craze’ culture as it is set in the Parish of St Giles, a slum
district, allowing Hogarth to depict the squalor and despair of the community
relying on gin without much exaggeration; this realistic setting would have
connected with the audience. It represents the desperation, death and decay of
the poverty stricken population. The only successful industries are those
connected to gin: the sellers, undertakers, distillers (ironically named
‘Kilman’), and the pawn broker. Hogarth makes a satirical retort, calling the
latter ‘Mr Pinch’, who collects vital possessions from the residents, including
the workers tools; Hogarth illustrates the carpenter offering his saw. The
black dog symbolises despair and depression. This shows the audience that gin
drinkers will give up their livelihoods for their addiction; religion was a
huge part of the culture and not working was committing the sin of ‘sloth’ in
Christian tradition. Near the pawn broker’s door, a snail approaches a sleeping
girl, emblematic of this sin. The church in the background, St. George’s Church
Bloomsbury, is seen faint and distant like the residents hope in faith; they
worship gin instead. Hogarth links gin to the devil, as the inhabitants partake
in ungodly activities. The barber, with a destroyed business, takes his own
life. Hogarth shows the ruin of women by placing a prostitute in the
foreground, identifiable by the syphilitic sores on her legs. He shocks the
audience as he shows that gin is on this half naked mother’s mind as her baby
slips and falls towards the gin cellar. This scared and warned the audience because
it reflected a shocking news story of the time: “In 1734, Judith Dufour
reclaimed her two year old child from the workhouse where it had been given a
new set of clothes; she then strangled it and left the infants body in a ditch
so that she could sell the clothes for gin” (George, 1985, p.41). At the time,
this image of the neglectful mother was becoming central to anti-gin
propaganda. Hogarth also illustrates a baby quietened by gin, an orphan, and
young girls drinking; these failing children symbolise the failing future of
England, if this gin culture was to continue.
Charles Lamb considered Gin Lane “sublime”, particularly
with the inclusion of details such as the almost invisible funeral procession
in the background. (Below image: fig.1)
Beer Street juxtaposes
the former, presenting thriving business and inhabitants. Water was
contaminated and beer provided a safe, high calorie, low alcoholic alternative.
Charles Knight commented that the artist had been “rapt beyond himself” and the
characters had an air of “tipsy jollity” (Knight, 1843, p.6). The people are
happy, healthy and working, taking a break, but still depicted with their tools
or in their place of work. This is a stark contrast to the unemployed of Gin
Lane. Hogarth (1833, p.64) described Beer
Street; “Here all is joyous and thriving. Industry and jollity go hand in
hand”. The health of the street is symbolised in the tankard and ham that the
blacksmith sits with under the ‘Barley Mow’ sign in the latter version of the
print. Beer Street also celebrates the period’s industriousness with overflowing baskets, workers
and the King’s speech on the table, which references the ‘Advancement of Our
Commerse and Cultivating Art of Peace’.
In the original Beer
Street print there is a Frenchman, an outsider and conveyed as evil by his
dark clothing which contrasts with the rest of the inhabitants light shades.
His is central in the image, heading to the left side of the canvas, while the
others are mainly facing the right, drawing attention to him. Hogarth responds to
the changing culture: as reported by the British Library, “The situation in France resulted in a
range of measures passed in Britain during the 1790s that were designed to
restrict political protest. This was a period of great repression in the
country that has been described as Prime Minister William Pitt’s ’Reign of
Terror’...At the same time large loyalist associations were formed throughout
the country pledging allegiance to the crown.” Hogarth pledges his own
allegiance to the crown in Beer Street:
the people toast to the Kings health on his birthday, 30th October,
suggested by the flag above the Church of St Martin, recently redesigned by
James Gibbs. He is also promoting the benefits of English beer, no foreign
influences have had any part of the prosperity of Beer Street; it is a truly
nationalistic image.
Another outsider
in this piece is the sign painter: he looks like a scrawny inhabitant of Gin Lane. Hogarth transformed him to
this, after his initial sketches portrayed him like the other jolly residents,
to encourage the audience to see the links between the pieces and to confirm
the effects of the spirit: his poor appearance is symbolic of the destruction
of gin and the streets rejection of it, ironically he is painting the advertisement.
Carrying his trademark palette, Hogarth has used this painter to reflect his
own status in society: standing over and observing. Paulson (1993) suggests
that he is the “lone beautiful figure...as he leans back to survey his work, he
forms the serpentine shape that Hogarth identified as the ‘line of beauty’”.
Thomas Clerk (1812) suggests that the sign painter is a satire on Jean-Etienne
Liotard, who was a painter praised by Horace Walpol for his attention to
detail. Liotard claimed that “Hogarth has introduced him, in several instances,
alluding to this want of genius” (Dallaway in Walpole, 1849, p.747).
There are many parallels and juxtapositions between the two
pieces. In Beer Street, a beer barrel
hangs above the street; in Gin Lane,
it is a hanging body. The pawn broker in Beer
Street, ironically named ‘Mr Pinch’, is not doing as well as his
counterpart, ‘Mr Gripe’, in Gin Lane.
Mr Pinch resorts to receiving beer through his window: a sign he is scared of
being seized for debt, deliberately done by Hogarth to send a warning to the
audience; the Georgian period had many notorious debtors’ prisons. It also ran
deep for him as his own father was imprisoned there.
The inhabitants
of Beer Street ignore the misery of Gin Lane, Hogarth is questioning the
viewer; are they aware and taking responsibility for the problem within their
culture? Paulson sees the images as working on a number of levels, differently
for each class in society. The middle class see a clear comparison of good and
evil, where the lower see a connection between the prosperity and poverty. For instance
the woman being carried through the streets in the sedan chair, a common mode
of transport to both reduce congestion and prevent the passenger setting foot
on the filthy street, acts as a cause of the ruin of the gin addled woman and
contrasts to another being fed gin in a wheelbarrow. During this period, the
free-market economy, as seen in Beer
Street, resulted in prosperity for some, but left the poor poorer. The two
prints show a “move away from a paternalistic state towards an unregulated market
economy” (Paulson, 1993, p.24-25), suggesting that Hogarth’s work is responding
to the changing economical culture of the time by both portraying it and
promoting it in Beer Street, while
showing the negatives through Gin Lane.
The majority of
the street is resting, refreshing themselves with a pint: the two fish sellers,
a porter and the two men carrying the sedan chair. Hogarth includes satire
through the woman who remains wedged in her sedan chair due to her restrictive
hoop skirt, while everyone has a drink. Also, the man painting the gin
advertisement continues to work, along with the tailors in an attic, a device
which connects to the Georgian audience because the wages of journeyman tailors
were the subject of disputes; finally settled in their favour at the July
Quarter Sessions, 1751. Hogarth also makes satirical and cutting statements on
artistic pretensions by putting into the scrap paper pile, George Turnbull’s
‘On Ancient Painting’ and William Lauder’s ‘Essay on Miltons Use...Imitation of
the Moderns in Paradise Lost’. The last book was found to be a hoax that
painted Milton as a plagiarist. The fact that these were both Scottish authors
reinforces Hogarth’s anti-foreigner feeling and he makes a controversial
statement with this imagery: he thought that this literature exaggerated art
and political connections and looked for aesthetic ones that weren’t there.
Hogarth aimed for
social change, hoping to change the attitudes towards gin and reduce the poor’s
dependency on it. Brain Sewell (2007) commented that, “Hogarth saw it all and
saw it straight, without Rowlandson’s gloss of puerile humour and without
Gainsborough’s gloss of sentimentality”. The prints were only 1 shilling and
were in wide circulation. Records from the 18th Century suggest that
his works were used for moral instruction by school masters (Bindman, 1981,
p.183). The Gin Act 1751, came about no doubt in part to Fielding and Hogarth’s
anti-gin propaganda, and contributed to the fall in gin production from 7
million gallons in 1751, to 4.25 in 1752. By 1757, George Burrington reported, “we
do not see the hundredth part of poor wretches drunk in the street” (Dillon,
2004, p.263). Hogarth’s anti-gin illustrations also helped to convince Sir John
Gonson to turn his attention from prostitution to gin and he started to
prosecute gin-related crimes severely.
Most of the social issues Hogarth focused on reflect and
respond to the changing and cultural forces of his time, but they also relate
to issues of the ‘human condition’. The TATE (2007) supports this stating that “no
other artist’s work has come to define a period of British history as
powerfully and enduringly as Hogarth’s. The exhibition explores an artist who
was strikingly modern in character, confronting subjects and themes – the city,
sexuality, manners, social integration, crime, political corruption, charity
and patriotism– that continue to preoccupy us today”. The illustrations made
during this period were crucial to the development of the culture and provided the
first steps of print mass production, creating a wide and varied audience for
illustration. Modern day illustrators use the works of Hogarth and his
contemporaries as motivation: their work played a huge role in the changing
culture and through communication of images, gave all classes something to
debate over and the illiterate awareness of politics and opportunity for
humour.
During the Georgian period, illustrators responded to the changing
and cultural forces through their art in many different ways. Hogarth, using moral
messages, drew the audience’s attention to the changeable cultural factors
which, in his opinion, were leading England’s society to ruin, hoping that it
would lead to a change in attitude towards the subject matter thus effecting
society for the better. Gillray, on the other hand, produced illustrations
which were more satirical, as Godfrey (2001) states, “he could scarcely
approach a subject without twisting a neck here, extending a nose there...Hogarth
was a moralist who believed that his art could improve the condition of
mankind. Gillray scarcely knew the meaning of the word ‘morality’, and appears
to have believed that mankind was beyond redemption. The Hogarth prints which
seem to have most interested Gillray were not a moralising series such as The
Harlot’s Progress (1732), but flamboyant single subjects such as Strolling
Actresses Dressing in a Barn (1738)” Gillray’s attitude towards his audience
affected his work- he did not aim to restore morality within the population,
but created more of a social commentary, presenting the people with exaggerated
versions of reality. (Left image: Fig.3)
Another leading illustrator during this period was
Rowlandson. The TATE describes his
drawings as “gently humorous, and in some cases objective, records of urban and
rustic life... they are characterised by an abundance of picaresque incidents,
whether robust or sentimental, and have much in common with the novels of
Laurence Sterne and Henry Fielding, which Rowlandson illustrated in 1808 and
1809. Rowlandson's reputation suffered in the prudish
moral climate of Victorian England, but by the mid 20th century he was
recognised as a minor master and one of the most brilliant draughtsmen of his
day.” He was undeniably skilled in his technique, as Cumming’s (2013) agrees:
“His draughtsmanship is lithe and
precise, anatomically correct in it’s every detail, full of whiplash outlines
and graduated stipples, beautifully coloured and curvilinear”.
Rowlandson responds
to the changing and cultural forces of the Georgian period differently to Hogarth
and Gillray. He was primarily interested in entertainment and humour, even
though these crossed over to political and social issues of the time: his main
aim was to draw the audience’s attention to the humour in their contemporaries.
Cumming’s (2013) states that “Rowlandson
always looks more generous than his exact contemporary James
Gillray because his figures are so stout – huge chins, piggy
snouts, colossal pie-eating teeth, a postprandial flush to every face, no
matter how lean, great hummocking bosoms, bottoms and bellies... Even the
vicious cobalt-coloured imp with its reptilian talons (income tax incarnate)
assaulting poor old John Bull has a chubby bum and wide thighs. He is too
comfortable, in short, to be alarming. And that is true of Rowlandson himself:
he lacks the moral indignation of Hogarth, or the dark and punitive genius of Gillray.
He is genuinely interested in laughter – and laughing... He might have made a
painter and was devoted to Rubens (like Gillray), but comedy got the better of him.” She also argues that Rowlandson is “stronger as a social
observer than a political satirist”; owing to his delight in the everyday
comedy in society and Georgian culture. “Rowlandson doesn't force the joke;
he just sketches in the merriment, showing us why we laugh”.
(Fig.2 Suitable Restrictions, 28 January 1789) “William Pitt proposed a regency settlement
with firm restrictions on the regent’s power on 16 January. Here, the prince is
shown as a child (wearing the type of dress that boys would until they were
breeched). He leans towards a crown but is retrained by Pitt, who pulls on
leading ribbons. The implications that the prince was too weak to control the
various factions was a damaging one.” (Cumming,
2013)
Illustrators
had a huge in effect on the culture of the period. Rowlandson was hired by the
prince because of this fact; Rowlandson is a communicator, his illustrations
connecting the ‘celebrities’ of the day, the royalty, court and politicians,
with the general public. Although the higher classes seemed to have all the
power, the public held a certain amount themselves as their great mass posed a
threat to those they disagreed with. Illustrators of this period of hierarchy
and strict social classes were some of the only members of society to be able
to transfer information between society’s ranks.
Georgian
illustrators living in London were surrounded by extremes, with exciting and
hellish sights, living in a culture full of change; in religion, industry,
class, and wealth. These influential illustrators of the Georgian period show that
not only does illustration respond to and effect changing and cultural forces,
but that it would be impossible to expect it not to. Their work served
as an effective questioning system within society and allowed the public to
have opinions and question rules. This is necessary for the progression of
society and due to these illustrators focusing on accepted topics, like
Hogarth’s Gin Lane, people began to ask questions and rethink their culture,
resulting in beneficial developments and change, even new laws (for example, The Gin Act, 1751). It also gave the
poor Georgian public a license to laugh through the satire and humour aimed at
those with wealth and power. For the first time, print was distributed quickly
and cheaply, and it was the beginning of an age where even the poor could learn
and become aware and involved. Most of all it gave the public knowledge, which
gave them power. Illustration was a catalyst for social change. The end of the
Georgian era made way for the ‘Golden Age’ of illustration, according to Wigan
(2006), the 1840s-90s, where the demand for pictorial information generated
numerous periodicals including Punch
in 1841.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GODFREY, R. (2001) James
Gillray The Art of Caricature. London: Tate Gallery Publishin Ltd.
HAWKSLEY, L. (2011) 50
British Artists You Should Know. Munich, Berlin, London, New York: Prestel
Publishing Ltd.
HALLETT, M,
RIDING, C (2006). Hogarth.
Tate Publishing.
PAULSON, R
(1993). Hogarth: Art and
Politics, 1750–64 Vol 3. 3rd Ed. Lutterworth Press.
GEORGE, D.
(1985). London Life in the
Eighteenth Century. Academy Chicago Publications.
KNIGHT, C.
(1843). London. London: Charles
Knight and Co.
WALPOLE, H. (1849). Anecdotes
of painting in England, with some account of the principal artists. London:
Henry G. Bohn.
BINDMAN, D. (1981). Hogarth.
Thames and Hudson.
HOGARTH, W. (1833) ‘Remarks
on various prints’. Anecdotes of William Hogarth, Written By Himself: With
Essays on His Life and Genious, and Criticisms on his Work. J.B Nichols and
Son.
TATE. Thomas
Rowlandson (1756-1827) Artist Biography. [Online] Available from: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/thomas-rowlandson-463
[Accessed: January 2014]
WHITE, DR M. Georgians.
British Library. [Online] Available from: http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/georgians/georgianhome.html
[Accessed: December 2013].
WIGAN, M. (2006) Basics
Illustration 01: Thinking Visually. [Online] Basics Illustration 01. AVA
Publishing SA. Available from: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9782940439843/title_page#X2ludGVybmFsX0J2ZGVwRmxhc2hSZWFkZXI/eG1saWQ9OTc4Mjk0MDQzOTg0My8y
[Accessed: January 2014]
SEWELL, B. (9 February 2007). Hogarth the Ham-fisted. London: Evening Standard.
DILLON, P. (2004). Gin:
The Much Lamented Death of Madam Geneva the Eighteenth Century Gin Craze.
Justin, Charles & Co.
IMAGES
(Fig.1) HOGARTH, W. (1751) Beer Street and Gin Lane.
[Print/Illustration] Available at: http://www.oldlondon.net/beer-street-and-gin-lane/
[15/01/2014]
(Fig.2) ROWLANDSON, T. (1789) Suitable Restrictions. [Illustration] Available at: http://www.artfund.org/what-to-see/exhibitions/2013/11/22/high-spirits-the-comic-art-of-thomas-rowlandson-exhibition
[15/01/2014]
(Fig.3) GILLRAY, J. (1792) A Sphere, projecting against a Plane. [Illustration] The British
Museum. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/james-gillray-art-caricature
[15/01/2014]
+-+Copy.JPG)
