Gulielmus Hogarth. Half-length self-portrait as mirror image over – outside of the oval – folios with his dog Trump and palette, enclosed by drapery as a symbol of the mysterious reflecting upon the mirror. Engraving by Thomas Cook (c. 1744 – London 1818). Inscribed: Painted by W. Hogarth. / Engraved by T. Cook / Published June 1^st 1801 by G. G. & J. Robinson Paternoster Row London, title as before. 38.7 x 29.2 cm.

The fine self-portrait with the waved line with “The Line of Beauty” on the palette as the artistic credo elucidated in his “Analysis of Beauty” of 1753. Here following the engraving of 1749 that itself is based on the painting of 1745 reverse to this (colour illustration see Hogarth Catalogue of the Tate Gallery from 1971/72 p. 73). In that as in the painting the designation on the palette still with the additions “And Grace” + “WH 1745”. The folios remaining without titles here.

“ The famous line with which Hogarth had baited the palette in his selfportrait is hardly more than incidental to a wideranging survey of the visual resources of art and their roots in nature. This in itself was original. ”

(Cat. Tate Gallery p. 74).

Due to a further use of the plate of the portrait of 1749 (see ”The Bruiser“) and the resulting rareness of impressions the Cook sheet here gains additional value. The more so as Cook “made a name as Hogarth engraver for himself, too” (Thieme-Becker). – The fine chiaroscuro determines the impression. – Narrow tear in the wide white margin. – See the complete description.
Offer no. 7,499 / EUR  220. (c. US$ 306.) + shipping

– The same in Cook’s smaller repetition. Inscribed: Hogarth pinxt. / T. Cook sculpt. / Published by Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, March 1^st. 1809., title as before. Image size 15.4 x 12 cm. – Trimmed within the wide white platemargin. This weakly agespotted.
Offer no. 9,040 / EUR  47. (c. US$ 65.) + shipping

– The same in stipple by Bartolozzi’s pupil Benjamin Smith (d. c. 1810). Inscribed: Painted by W. Hogarth. / Engraved by Benj. Smith. / William Hogarth. / From the Original in the Collection of John & Josuah Boydell. / Published June 2. 1795 by J. & J. Boydell … at the Shakespeare Gallery Pall Mall. 39.5 x 30 cm.

Nagler 33 and, Smith, 4. – Posthumous version of the painterly self-portrait of 1745 for the first complete edition (1790-1809) published by Boydell as the original plate of 1749 was lost due to the said further use by Hogarth in 1763. Unlike the engraving of 1749 in the same direction as the painting. Otherwise with the full palette inscription “The Line of Beauty / And Grace / WH 1745” and readable titles for two of the three tomes: Shakespeare and Swift Works resp. – Later impression on buff paper (“Even these became relatively rare today though”, Art Gallery Esslingen 1970). – Diagonal marginal box pleat still affecting the rightmargin of the picture and a further horizontal one weakly perceptible for just a few cm above of the folios. Backed dog’s ear upper right. The wide white margin foxstippled and with weak waterstreak lower left.
Offer no. 7,610 / EUR  220. (c. US$ 306.) + shipping

– – – The same in steel engraving about 1840. Inscribed: William Hogarth. 14.3 x 10 cm. – In the same direction as the painting of 1745, also with the full inscription on the palette, but instead of “WH 1745” there with just a disappearing “Will…”. The folios without titles. – Horizontal box pleat below of the picture itself.
Offer no. 7,611 / EUR  40. (c. US$ 56.) + shipping

Columbus breaking the Egg. Columbus’ answer to the blasphemers of his performance. Engraving by Thomas Cook (c. 1744 – London 1818). Inscribed: Engraved by T. Cook., title as before and rest of the address Paternoster Row August 1^st. 1800. 15.8 x 19.2 cm.

The 1752 subscription ticket for “Analysis of Beauty” whose essence, the sinuous line, is symbolized by the two eels with eggs in the oval form of the plate in front. According to Peter Bexte, William Hogarth – Analyse der Schönheit, 1995, Hogarth used this scene together for a parody on Leonardo’s ‘Lord’s Supper’:

“ Christ (is) replaced by Columbus, and the astonished disciples became scholars taken unaware ”.

Columbus’ turn to the right as seen from the onlooker follows Hogarth’s own etching which might be, as repeatedly, in reverse to its model. – Two sides trimmed within the white platemark with only a fine margin at top.
Offer no. 7,550 / EUR  95. (c. US$ 132.) + shipping

– The same as Hogarth’s own etching in the state of 1753 in an impression from the plate reworked by the royal engraver James Heath (1757 London 1834) about 1822 (“Even these impressions became relatively rare today though”, Art Gallery Esslingen 1970; and Meyers Konv.-Lex., 4^th ed., VIII [1888], 625: “A fine edition”). Inscribed: Design’d & Etch’d by Wm. Hogarth Decem 1. 1753. 16.5 x 19.5 cm. – On Columbus’ bearing see before.

Illustrations Hogarth Catalogue Zurich, 1983, 78 + Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jan. 23, 1996 (Friedmar Apel, Verfolgung einer Schlangenlinie). – On buff paper. – Wide-margined.
Offer no. 7,755 / EUR  50. (c. US$ 70.) + shipping

– The same in Cook’s smaller repetition. Inscribed: Hogarth pinxt. / T. Cook sculpt. / Published by Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, Nov. 1^st. 1807., title as before. Image size 14.1 x 17 cm. – Columbus’ bearing as before. – Trimmed within the wide white platemark. In this some small spots.
Offer no. 8,985 / EUR  40. (c. US$ 56.) + shipping

– The same in engraving by Carl Heinrich Rahl (Hoffenheim 1779 – Vienna 1843). (1818/23.) 18.9 x 20 cm. – Columbus’ bearing as seen from the onlooker now to the right as on the following sheets, too, while Riepenhausen is known to have corrected Hogarth’s reversed engravings. – Upper right plate no. 49.
Offer no. 7,756 / EUR  56. (c. US$ 78.) + shipping

– The same in engraving by Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen (1765 Göttingen 1840, university engraver there). Inscribed: 49 / W. Hogarth inv. 18.3 x 23 cm. – Early, toned impression. – Wide-margined.
Offer no. 7,757 / EUR  71. (c. US$ 99.) + shipping

– The same by Riepenhausen as before, but on slightly toned minor paper. – A few foxspots and light box pleat in the white lower margin.
Offer no. 9,516 / EUR  59. (c. US$ 82.) + shipping

– The same by Riepenhausen as before, but in an impression about 1850 on especially buff paper.
Offer no. 14,088 / EUR  64. (c. US$ 89.) + shipping

– The same in lithograph by C. F. Heintz. (1833/36.) Inscribed: 53. / Columbus stellt ein Ey auf die Spitze. / Lith. v. C. F. Heintz . 21.8 x 17.8 cm. – Extensive subtext in German: Columbus puts an egg on its top.
Offer no. 14,089 / EUR  59. (c. US$ 82.) + shipping

– The same in steel engraving about 1840. 13.5 x 18 cm. – With title in German + English.
Offer no. 7,759 / EUR  29. (c. US$ 40.) + shipping

Analysis of Beauty. Set of 2 sheets engraved by Thomas Cook (c. 1744 – London 1818). Inscribed: Plate I. (II.) / Designed by W. Hogarth. / Engraved by T. Cook / London Published by G. G. & J. Robinson Pater-noster Row August 1^st 1798., title as before. 40-41.3 x 51.2-51.6 cm.

Hogarth Catalogue of the Tate Gallery, 1971/72, 191 f. + Hogarth Catalogue Zurich, 1983, 76 f., each Hogarth’s version with illustrations.

Hogarth’s theory on beauty and grace (“Nature is whatever pleases the eye and entertains it”), developed with the intellectual help of his friends Hoadly, Townley, Morell and others by many examples from art and history, was published in 1753 with the addition of two illustrating engravings (Statuary’s Inn Yard + Country Dance) and “stirred an immense sensation” (Thieme-Becker), not last among his critics. It forms his artistic credo “wherein he describes the sinuous line (The Line of Beauty) as the most pleasant form for the eye and even wanted to determine the lines which contain the form of beauty” (Meyer’s Konversations-Lexikon, 4^th ed.). Relating thereto though, so Nagler, “not everything is new, as the idea of the waved line. He symbolized this by an engraved palette with a bowed line (see this on the self-portrait with the dog), and as he was later told that one had known this already he (referred to the above) sheet with Columbus and the Egg”. Résumé of the whole is the small line sketch 71 on the posture of the dancers within the marginal depictions of the second sheet.

All numbered consecutively, plate I shows the most different figures – among which judge Bathurst signing a death penalty (appearing again in “The Bench” of 1758) whose train is carried by a boy armed with a gallows – , heads, limbs, plants, and other things. The statuary yard of his friend Henry Cheere at Hyde Park corner served as pattern of the place, “recalling Clito’s yard which was the setting of Socrates’ discussion of beauty in Xenophon’s Memorabilia” (Cat. Tate Gallery).

Equally lined plate II with its fine ball-like presentation of the  English  dance  (24-28.5 x 42.8 cm) by which the ideal of beauty + grace is illustrated. And here especially dominating by the couple dancing front left somewhat isolated whose elegance contrasts with the more rustic appearance of the rest of the party. By the way Hogarth transformed this gentleman in the 3^rd state, not without expectation, into a portrait of the future George II. On the dancing floor, partly covered by the cast-off hats of the gentlemen, the silk cushion as necessary accessories of any ball for the so-called cushion dance, a kind of cotillion. The painting “The Dance” of c. 1745 as picture VI of “The Happy Marriage” served as model for this rich scenery.

All this presented quite comfortably here as Cook – “made a name as Hogarth engraver for himself, too”, Thieme-Becker – preserved the original format as the one and only among the posthumous engravers.

In regard of the intellectual background the catalogue of the Tate Gallery i. a. – generally see there pp. 74-76 with also comparing illustrations – points out to the following aspect :

“ The Line of Grace itself, a three-dimensional serpentine rhythm, is considered in the light of a psychology of the perception of form which remains perfectly credible, and indeed so relevant to the psychological aesthetics of modern art as to suggest that in Germany, where the Analysis was translated within a month, it contributed something to the mainstream of aesthetic, philosophy that it never has in Britain. It is true that ‘the Analysis is the first work … to make formal values both the starting point and basis of a whole aesthetic theory’. Yet even this commendation places a limit on understanding the book. ”

Upper margin trimmed to platemark. Reverse only very partially weakly foxing and only on plate II penetrating the image at two spots (quite minimally outer left and just negligibly more above of the dancing hall).

Added: The Analysis of Beauty. Written with a view of fixing the fluctuation ideas of taste. (London 1803.) Large folio. Pp. 17-44 (cpl.). Unbound in cardboard wrappers. – “Readers … find a richer and subtler book than current ideas if it lead one to expect” (Tate Gallery op. cit.).

Nevertheless Lichtenberg treats the work and its repeated appearance on other plates with the remark Hogarth “shall have cherished a greater vanity in regard (of the discovery he made) than about those works of art that immortalized him”.
Offer no. 11,656 / EUR  510. / export price EUR  484. (c. US$ 674.) + shipping

– The same in engraving by the university engraver Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen (1765 Göttingen 1840). Inscribed: 87. (88.) / Designed by W. Hogarth. (1753.) / Riepenhausen (d.) S(s)c. / Plate I. (II.), title as above. 24 x 30.5-30.7 cm.

Without the text addition. – Riepenhausen’s works after Hogarth (“very estimable”, Nagler) count among his main work and are partly even preferred to Hogarth’s engravings. – On slightly toned minor paper. Plate II cleaned and with vertical box pleat outside of the left image lining.
Offer no. 7,823 / EUR  151. (c. US$ 210.) + shipping

– The same in steel engraving about 1840. 13 x 15.5-15.9 cm. – Without the text addition. – Sheet I slightly foxspotting and with acid-freely backed tiny tear in the wide lateral margin.
Offer no. 7,824 / EUR  66. (c. US$ 92.) + shipping

(Statuary’s Inn Yard.) Engraving. Inscribed: Analysis of Beauty. Plate I. / Designed, Engraved, and Published by Wm. Hogarth, March 5^th 1753, according to Act of Parliament. 39 x 50.5 cm.

The first sheet of the set as above. – Upper right with weak waterstreak in the wide white margin, just affecting the outmost corner of the image. A quite minimal further one in the upper left paper corner. Two tiny tears in the outer margin backed acid-freely.
Offer no. 7,825 / EUR  138. (c. US$ 192.) + shipping

(Country Dance.) Engraving by Thomas Cook (c. 1744 – London 1818) together with his son. Inscribed: Pl. II. / Analysis of Beauty. / Hogarth pinxt. / T. Cook & Son sc. / Published by Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, July 1^st. 1808. Image size 14.4 x 17.8 cm.

The final sheet, here in Cook’s smaller repetition – Trimmed within the wide white platemark. Its marginal parts weakly foxing. – See the complete description.
Offer no. 8,986 / EUR  84. (c. US$ 117.) + shipping

(Hogarth Painting the Comic Muse.) Self-portrait in full length sitting at the easel. Engraving. Inscribed: William Hogarth. 1764. 40.5 x 35.5 cm.

Nagler 43 + Hogarth Catalogue Zurich, 1983, 95 with ills., both the first edition of 1758 on occasion of the appointment as court painter of George II, worked directly after the painting (colour ills. Hogarth Catalogue of the Tate Gallery, 1971/72, p. 11). “The sheet was sold heavily so that the artist could arrange repeated editions … Single changes … in the different editions …” (Lichtenberg). The one here from 1764 with the addition “Comedy 1764” within the pillar right of the picture on the easel, otherwise with updated short subtext as George II had died in 1760.

Important compared with the painting the inclusion of “Analysis of Beauty”. The first of its two engravings looks out of the book leaning against the easel lower right. The shapes of the muse according to the theory of beauty with the waved line developed as its core. The portrait thus underlines quite more than the previous one of 1749 how in the long run the “Analysis” became more and more important to Hogarth. Though not agreeing with him Lichtenberg nevertheless sums up on the picture itself:

“ By the posture and the expression of the whole figure in practicing the art the portrait seems to be of even higher value than the smaller one. ”

Heath impression as before. – The wide white margin slightly foxspotting.
Offer no. 7,612 / EUR  291. / export price EUR  276. (c. US$ 384.) + shipping

– The same in steel engraving about 1840. Inscribed: William Hogarth. 19.1 x 14.2 cm.

Without “Comedy 1764” and laterally slightly shortened. The brush pot on the floor moved to the picture’s centre accordingly. – On the right trimmed to the lining edge.
Offer no. 7,613 / EUR  50. (c. US$ 70.) + shipping

(The Bruiser, C. Churchill … in the Character of a Russian Hercules.) The writer Churchill whose “Epistle to Hogarth” provoked the master in the character of a strong Russian bear, hugging a tankard full of porter. In his left a knotted club referring to contemporary policy. The rest done by Hogarth’s favourite dog Trump trampling the epistle which he treats contemptuously in a manner not natural to the canine species. Engraving by Thomas Cook (c. 1744 – London 1818). Inscribed: Designed by W. Hogarth. / Engraved by T. Cook. / London Published by G. G. & J. Robinson Paternoster Row June 1^st. 1800. 37.8 x 28.9 cm.

Hogarth Catalogue of the Tate Gallery, 1971/72, 220 (2^nd H. state before the superposition of the palette by the print illustration, so the Cook version here, too) + Hogarth catalogue Zurich, 1983, 91 (7^th state with the superposition), both with illustration.

A  rarer  sujet  made in the rush (August 1763) on a plate of self-portrait of 1749 of which he substituted his own head by that of Churchill. Several he added, the titles of the folio volumes were adapted: Great George Street A List of the Subscribers to the North Britons + A new way to Pay old Debts, a comedy by Massenger. Also “The Line of Beauty” fell victim to grinding in face of such a stout, lusty, and rough person as Churchill is described. The print illustration now superpositioning the palette no more taken over by Cook than the subtext.

Churchill, a degenerated writing clergyman, was a partisan of John Wilkes for whose North Briton Gazette he worked and which is symbolized here as club plastered with lies, slaying the cartoon. But, as so often, the work grew far beyond its cause.

For once the removal of the “Beauty Line” led directly to the Analysis complex:

“ Hogarth regarded the likeness to a bear as more insulting than it may generally appear; for him there was an aesthetic antithesis between the earlier and later significance of the plate. In the ‘Analysis’ he wrote that ‘we may … lineally account for the ugliness of the … bear … which (is) totally devoid of this waving-line …’ ”

On the other hand to an intellectual reflection the exchange of the image done at a late moment:

“ There was nevertheless a quality akin to self-destruction in appropriating to his purpose the plate of his own portrait, which served as frontispiece to his collected works. ”

And ‘What may follow God knows. Finis.’ he meditated in this context. But

“ This was not quite the end of the story. Hogarth continued to work on his notes … and his concluding print ‘The Bathos’ was engraved in the following year ” (April).

(all Cat. Tate Gallery S. 89.) ‘The Bruiser’ as second but last work thus.

Excellent print of fine chiaroscuro on solid paper. – See the complete description.
Offer no. 7,500 / EUR  496. / export price EUR  471. (c. US$ 656.) + shipping

– The same in Cook’s smaller repetition. Inscribed: C. Churchill. / Hogarth pinxt. / T. Cook sculpt. / Published by Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, Nov. 1^st. 1807. Image size 17.5 x 14 cm. – Trimmed inside the wide white margins. Its edges slightly foxing.
Offer no. 8,898 / EUR  138. (c. US$ 192.) + shipping

Tail Piece or The Bathos or manner of Sinking, in Sublime Paintings, inscribed to the Dealers in Dark Pictures. The end of Everything. Engraving by Thomas Cook (c. 1744 – London 1818). 1798. Inscribed: Designed by W. Hogarth. / Engraved by T. Cook. / Published by G. G. & J. Robinson Pater-noster Row December 1^st. 1708. (recte 1808), otherwise as above. 34 x 36.7 cm.

Hogarth catalogue of the Tate Gallery, 1971/72, 222, + Hogarth catalogue Zurich, 1983, 94, both the Hogarth version of 1764 and with ills. – Extensive subtext with – besides verses by Tacitus and Maximus Tyrius – important reference to “Analysis of Beauty” by two cone figures on the sides. While the right one quotes figure 21 of that the similar left one is new since

“ did not occur to the Author, till two or three Years after his publication of the Analysis, in 1754 ” (recte 1753).

It is

“ The Conic Form in which the Goddess of Beauty was worshipd by the Ancients at Paphos in y^e Island of Cyprus. / See the Medals struck when a Roman Emperer visited the Temple. ”

In their intactness these cones have only seemingly nothing in common with the main picture above. Because

“ The allegory has also a personal application. Hogarth characteristically regarded the eclipse of his artistic ideal and his own decline as the collapse of the universe and the end of the world. Time expiring bequeaths every atom of himself to Chaos. His testament is witnessed by the Fates ”

(Cat. Tate Gallery). And the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of Nov. 8, 1997:

“ Rarely an artist has said goodbye to the world that moving. ”

It is Hogarth’ last graphic work, seven months before his death. Artistically a recourse to Salvator Rosa the title is based on Pope’s poetical counterpart “Peri Bathous” as itself “a parody of Longinus’ ‘Peri Hypsous’”. Correspondingly Lichtenberg (“A ridicule of the so-called academic school of painters”) overweights this aspect compared with the final message.

The scenery itself of an unheard of radicalism. Since also and especially those attributes otherwise signalling the ending of the times are affected by the ruin: Scythe and hourglass are broken here as are crown, pipe, palette, bottle, bell, the pub “The Worlds End” with the burning globe as its plate, the church as several other symbols of Vanitas. The clock lost its hands, the trees are as dead as the hanged man – and Phoebus in the burning sky waggon together with his horses tumbling down to the bottomless abyss. Finally Saturn himself as god of the time – the winged death – as of the wealth founded by agriculture breathes his last “Finis” while his last will – witnessed by the three Fates Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos – slips from his hand: All and every Atom there of to Chaos. Shortly “H. Nature Bankrupt”.

With the exception of the man in the thin crescent of the decreasing moon who still seems to be alive a bit. As also the gallows are standing fast. To increase the bathos a few puns have been mixed in the whole mess: a cobler’s end and last resp., a rope’s end, and the candle’s end.

Wonderful, only a little later copy of glorious chiaroscuro and adequately wide margins and freshness of this print by Cook who “is also famous as engraver of Hogarth” (Thieme-Becker). As the only one of the posthumous editions he stuck to the original size. – With watermark “1811 W Balston”; comp. the double mark “J Whatman & W Balston 1813” Heawood 117. – In the right outer margin two small slight waterstreaks. The partial little foxing on the back visible in just two spots in the heaven’s part. – See the complete description.
Offer no. 7,545 / EUR  291. / export price EUR  276. (c. US$ 384.) + shipping

– The Same in Hogarth’s own engraving. Inscribed: Design’d and Engrav’d by Wm. Hogarth. / Published according to Act of Parliamt. March 3^d. 1764, otherwise as above. 32.3 x 33.5 cm. – Extremely wide-margined Heath impression as above.
Offer no. 7,738 / EUR  176. (c. US$ 245.) + shipping

– The same in Cook’s smaller repetition. Inscribed: The Bathos. / Hogarth pinxt. / T. Cook sculpt. / Published by Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, Nov. 1^st. 1807. Picture size 15.6 x 17.2 cm (paper size 21.2 x 27.4 cm).

In the lower margin besides the title the two cones only, with no commentary, even without the reference “Fig. 21.”. – Very fine impression. – Trimmed within the extremely wide white plate margin which is somewhat time-stained below and on the right.
Offer no. 9,002 / EUR  50. (c. US$ 70.) + shipping

– The Same as engraving by Rahl as above. 19.5 x 23 cm. – The pure picture only as the following, too, and thus without reference to the Analysis.
Offer no. 7,739 / EUR  87. (c. US$ 121.) + shipping

– The Same as engraving by Riepenhausen as above. Inscribed: W. Hogarth inv. / R. d sc f. 21.5 x 23.5 cm. – Early impression with distinct plate tone and extremely wide lateral margins.

Riepenhausen’s  main  work  (“very valuable”, Nagler), partially even preferred to Hogarth’s own engravings.
Offer no. 7,740 / EUR  125. (c. US$ 174.) + shipping

– The same by Riepenhausen as before but on slightly toned paper of minor quality. 22 x 23.8 cm.
Offer no. 14,086 / EUR  87. (c. US$ 121.) + shipping

– The Same by Riepenhausen as before in an impression from the plate trimmed in the lower plate margin for the never entered text of about 1850 on especially strong paper. 19.7 x 23.5 cm.
Offer no. 12,144 / EUR  115. (c. US$ 160.) + shipping

– The Same as lithograph by Heintz as above. Inscribed: 34. / Das Ende aller Dinge (The End of all Things) / lith. C. F. Heintz, otherwise as above. 20.5 x 20.7 cm.

With extensive subtext à la Lichtenberg in German: “… Only one thing held on – The gallows. It seems also the coming world cannot miss it, so it remains upright anyway …” – The really light foxing visible only against the light. – All in all good though not equally tinted impression.
Offer no. 14,087 / EUR  87. (c. US$ 121.) + shipping

– The Same as steel engraving of c. 1840. Inscribed: Das Ende aller Dinge (The End of all Things). 13.5 x 15.5 cm. – On slightly browned paper.
Offer no. 7,742 / EUR  38. (c. US$ 53.) + shipping

“ Thank for the images … Convinced … wrap it up and forward an invoice and I will post you a check .... attached a photo of my Vessel … Look forward to more … Thanks ”

(Mr. M. M., June 13, 2006)