Hogarth
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | Hogarth: A Life and a World |
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| Author: | Jenny Uglow |
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| Publisher: | Faber & Faber |
Evoking Hogarth’s fierce nationalism, his philanthropic vision, and his antagonistic dance with London’s artists and patrons, Jenny Uglow’s acclaimed biography “crackles with vitality and sparkles with insights” (Michael Holroyd). In the company of his friends and peers—Swift, Gay, Pope, and the rest—Hogarth burned to expose hypocrisy and yearned to be recognized as a painter in the grand old tradition. In decoding his work’s details and damning references—to craven leaders and corrupt institutions, and the beloved, tragicomic tribulations of rakes, harlots, and common citizens—Uglow breathes life into his accomplishment and his thwarted ambition, showing herself at every turn “in sympathetic rapport with Hogarth the man” (P.N. Furbank, The New York Review of Books).
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Reviews
Amazon.com
Combining in-depth history with perceptive explication of the references encoded in William Hogarth’s images, Jenny Uglow enables modern readers to fully understand the society that shaped the art of William Hogarth (1697-1764). Hugely popular engravings such as A Rake’s Progress and Marriage A-La-Mode commented on the tumultuous changes sweeping through 18th-century English society; Hogarth was appreciated as a moralist as much as a painter. Uglow colorfully recreates a vanished world, as well as the prickly nature of a man who revolutionized the role and the status of British artists.
