| The Enraged Musician | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | William Hogarth |
| Year | 1741 |
The Enraged Musician is a 1741 etching and engraving by English artist William Hogarth which depicts a comic scene of a violinist driven to distraction by the cacophony outside his window. It was issued as companion piece to the third state of his print of The Distrest Poet .
In November 1740, Hogarth advertised his intention to issue a three-image set: The Provok'd Musician, The Distrest Poet , and a third image on the subject of "Painting" . The third image was never completed, and the two other prints were issued together in November 1741. The engraving appears to be based on an oil sketch held in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, though there are some differences between the monochrome sketch and the engraving. [1]
The image is ostensibly a purely comic scene. While the violinist attempts to rehearse, the noisiest inhabitants of London pass by his window. On the far left a squawking parrot perches above a pregnant ballad-seller singing "The Ladies' Fall" while holding her bawling baby. A young girl holding a ratchet looks with amazement at a boy urinating below the musician's window (this is an often repeated image in Hogarth's work: similar scenes can be seen in The March to Finchley and in his illustrations for Hudibras and may be a reference to John Gay's "Trivia"). [2] The boy has a cord tied round his waist attached to a trailing slate which would clatter along the ground as he ran. In the centre of the picture a young milk-seller calling her wares provides the real focus of the picture; though set back more from the viewer than some of the subjects, she appears larger than the children and the crouching figure of the cutler. She balances a large pail of milk on her head and is the only subject that looks out at the viewer. This, combined with the large expanse of white apron, draws the viewer's eye towards her. Ronald Paulson, the modern authority on Hogarth, suggests that she is singing and that her beauty and grace—she delicately lifts her skirt to avoid dragging it through the boy's urine—mark her out as the only natural musician in the scene; while the other inhabitants of the street produce discordant notes, the music of the violinist would be no better, because he has restricted himself by his studies and by removing himself from nature. He covers his ears to block out the cacophony of the street noise, but at the same time he denies himself the sweet music of the milkmaid's voice. [3]
The milkmaid is flanked on either side by street musicians: to her right a man plays a hautboy, metaphorically thumbing his nose at the violinist; and to her left a small boy beats a drum. Behind the milkmaid, a paviour beats the ground with a heavy rammer. In the lower right-hand corner a dog barks at the racket created by a knife-grinder sharpening a cleaver. Behind these characters, a host of street vendors noisily announce their services: a dustman with a basket on his back rings a handbell, a sow-gelder blows a horn, and a fishmonger cups his hand to his mouth as he shouts. In the distance there is a hint of yet more noise. A church—traditionally identified as St Martin-in-the-Fields yet closer in form to St Giles-in-the-Fields [4] —flies a flag, suggesting perhaps an important event during which bells would be rung. The building to the right is the works of pewterer John Long, from which would issue a constant ring of hammers, and on its roof two hissing cats with arched backs prepare to fight. Appearing from the chimney is a sweep who may be calling to an unseen colleague that his work is done. In the lower left corner some loose bricks—suggestive of building works out of view—have been piled up (no doubt noisily) into a little house. The long-nosed violinist framed in the open window clamps his hands to ears in frustration. [5]
While the image entertains purely by the number of references to noisy activities crammed into the scene, the play-bill for Gay's The Beggar's Opera , prominently displayed on the wall next to the musician's window, hints at developments in British music at the time. The Beggar's Opera had enjoyed extraordinary success and had caused, or at least coincided with, a shift in the taste of audiences away from Italian opera and towards "British" music and homegrown culture. Hogarth was an enthusiastic supporter of the change in public tastes. He had mocked the vogue for continental fashions in many of his works ( A Rake's Progress and Marriage à-la-mode both have scenes dedicated to the foolishness of the Levée , and, in 1724, even before The Beggar's Opera, in the earliest of his self-published satirical prints The Bad Taste of the Town Hogarth mocked the fashion for Italian opera and Italian opera singers). The play-bill here is anachronistic as it advertises the play with the original 1728 cast. The musician's identity has never been satisfactorily established. He is identified as an Italian both by Jean André Rouquet, whose French notes on the prints were approved by Hogarth, and by John Trusler who claimed Hogarth's widow's approval for his Hogarth Moralized. [6] He has been variously identified as a number of foreign musicians of the time, including "Corvetto, well known by the name of Nosee" [7] (probably Giacobbe Cervetto, often caricaturized for his large nose), and Pietro Castrucci, the leader of Handel's orchestra. Handel had noted the shift in public taste himself, and from the 1730s he composed more English oratorio and theatre works, including the setting the works of Milton, Dryden and Congreve to music. [5] [7] Hogarth, as well as comically juxtaposing high and low culture, could be suggesting that a foreign tradition is being silenced by a burgeoning sense of Britishness. This may have been an afterthought though, as the playbill was not present in the earliest impressions, and the hautboy player and paver are usually respectively identified as Jewish and Irish, while the drummer boy is dressed in the same fashion as the young Huguenot leaving the church in Noon, the second scene of Hogarth's Four Times of the Day . The musician has also been identified as John Festin (mistakenly rendered as Foster in some accounts), a teacher of the flute and hautboy, by Hogarth's friend and biographer John Ireland and later by the commentator John Trusler. The story Festin told Hogarth obviously provided the inspiration for at least part of the scene:
I once waited upon my lord Spencer, but his lordship being out of town, from him I went to Mr. V——n. It was so early that he was not arisen. I went into his chamber, and, opening a shutter, sat down in the window-seat. Before the rails was a fellow playing upon the hautboy. A man with a barrow full of onions offered the piper an onion if he would play him a tune. That ended, he offered a second onion for a second tune; the same for a third, and was going on: but this was too much; I could not bear it; it angered my very soul—'Zounds!' said I, 'stop here! This fellow is ridiculing my profession; he is playing on the hautboy for onions!' [8]
The hautboy player has similarly defied identification. Charles Frederick Weideman, a leading London flautist, who had played the oboe earlier in his career, has been suggested as the flautist seen playing in plate 4 of Marriage à-la-mode , and in The Enraged Musician: Hogarth's Musical Imagery, Jeremy Barlow claims that he and the hautboy player are one and the same. [9] The presence of many street traders may also satirise Marcellus Laroon's much-copied 17th-century prints of The Cryes of the City of London and more recent images by Hogarth's rival, Giacomo Amiconi.
An early trial impression was missing the church steeple, cats, the man blowing the horn and the play-bill. In this version the dustman was missing his nose (a sign that he was syphilitic), a doll was placed in the model brick house in the foreground, and the drummer boy sported a Grenadier's cap. The drummer was handsome and had turned to look towards the little girl. By the time the print was issued this suggestion of a domestic theme with the boy, girl, and house with "child" had been removed. The boy had his cap removed and his handsome face turned away from the girl and replaced by features which Charles Lamb described as "idiotic". [7] The doll was removed and the girl given a rattle to add to the image of pure noise. [10] Later copies featured a black horse in place of the white horse ridden by the horn blower and showed cross-hatching on the sleeves of the ballad-seller and the play-bill. Later impressions also made the dog and grinder darker, while lightening the cap of the sow-gelder. [11]
William Hogarth was an English painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, social critic, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects", and he is perhaps best known for his series A Harlot's Progress, A Rake's Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode. Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian".
A Rake's Progress is a series of eight paintings by 18th-century English artist William Hogarth. The canvases were produced in 1732–1734, then engraved in 1734 and published in print form in 1735. The series shows the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, the spendthrift son and heir of a rich merchant, who comes to London, wastes all his money on luxurious living, prostitution and gambling, and as a consequence is imprisoned in the Fleet Prison and ultimately Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam). The original paintings are in the collection of Sir John Soane's Museum in London, where they are normally on display for a short period each day.
A Harlot's Progress is a series of six paintings and engravings (1732) by the English artist William Hogarth. The series shows the story of a young woman, M. Hackabout, who arrives in London from the country and becomes a prostitute. The series was developed from the third image. After painting a prostitute in her boudoir in a garret on Drury Lane, Hogarth struck upon the idea of creating scenes from her earlier and later life. The title and allegory are reminiscent of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.
Industry and Idleness is the title of a series of 12 plot-linked engravings created by William Hogarth in 1747, intending to illustrate to working children the possible rewards of hard work and diligent application and the sure disasters attending a lack of both. Unlike his earlier works, such as A Harlot's Progress (1731) and Marriage à-la-mode (1743), which were painted first and subsequently converted to engravings, Industry and Idleness was created solely as a set of engravings. Each of the prints was sold for 1/– each so 12/– for the entire set, which is equivalent in purchasing power to approximately £80 STG as of 2005. It may be assumed that these prints were aimed for a wider and less wealthy market than his earlier works. The originals currently reside at the British Museum.
The Four Stages of Cruelty is a series of four printed engravings published by English artist William Hogarth in 1751. Each print depicts a different stage in the life of the fictional Tom Nero.
Four Times of the Day is a series of four oil paintings by English artist William Hogarth. They were completed in 1736 and in 1738 were reproduced and published as a series of four engravings. They are humorous depictions of life in the streets of London, the vagaries of fashion, and the interactions between the rich and poor. Unlike many of Hogarth's other series, such as A Harlot's Progress, A Rake's Progress, Industry and Idleness, and The Four Stages of Cruelty, it does not depict the story of an individual, but instead focuses on the society of the city in a humorous manner. Hogarth does not offer a judgment on whether the rich or poor are more deserving of the viewer's sympathies. In each scene, while the upper and middle classes tend to provide the focus, there are fewer moral comparisons than seen in some of his other works. Their dimensions are about 74 cm (29 in) by 61 cm (24 in) each.
Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn is a painting from 1738 by British artist William Hogarth. It was reproduced as an engraving and issued with Four Times of the Day as a five print set in the same year. The painting depicts a company of actresses preparing for their final performance before the troupe is disbanded as a result of the Licensing Act 1737. Brought in as a result of John Gay's Beggar's Opera of 1728, which had linked Robert Walpole with the notorious criminal Jonathan Wild, the Licensing Act made it compulsory for new plays to be approved by the Lord Chamberlain, and, more importantly for the characters depicted, closed any non-patent theatres. The majority of the painting was completed before the Act was passed in 1737, but its passing into law was no surprise and it was the work of a moment for Hogarth to insert a reference to the Act itself into the picture.
The Gate of Calais or O, the Roast Beef of Old England is a 1748 painting by William Hogarth, reproduced as a print from an engraving the next year. Hogarth produced the painting directly after his return from France, where he had been arrested as a spy while sketching in Calais. The scene depicts a side of beef being transported from the harbour to an English tavern in the port, while a group of undernourished, ragged French soldiers and a fat friar look on hungrily. Hogarth painted himself in the left corner with a "soldier's hand upon my shoulder."
The Bench is the title of both a 1758 oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Hogarth, and a print issued by him in the same year. Unlike many of Hogarth's engravings produced from painted originals, the print differs considerably from the painting. It was intended as a demonstration of the differences between character painting, caricature and outré—developing on the theme he had begun to address in Characters and Caricaturas —but Hogarth was unhappy with the result as it showed only "characters", and he continued to work on the piece until his death.
The Distrest Poet is an oil painting produced sometime around 1736 by the British artist William Hogarth. Reproduced as an etching and engraving, it was published in 1741 from a third state plate produced in 1740. The scene was probably inspired by Alexander Pope's satirical poem The Dunciad. It depicts a scene in a small, dingy attic room where a poet sits at his desk in the dormer and, scratching his head, stares at the papers on the desk before him, evidently looking for inspiration to complete the poem he is writing. Near him sits his wife darning clothes, surprised by the entrance of a milkmaid, who impatiently demands payment of debts.
Beer Street and Gin Lane are two prints issued in 1751 by English artist William Hogarth in support of what would become the Gin Act. Designed to be viewed alongside each other, they depict the evils of the consumption of gin as a contrast to the merits of drinking beer. At almost the same time and on the same subject, Hogarth's friend Henry Fielding published An Inquiry into the Late Increase in Robbers. Issued together with The Four Stages of Cruelty, the prints continued a movement started in Industry and Idleness, away from depicting the laughable foibles of fashionable society and towards a more cutting satire on the problems of poverty and crime.
Columbus Breaking the Egg is a 1752 engraving by English artist William Hogarth. Issued as the subscription ticket for his treatise on art, The Analysis of Beauty, it depicts an apocryphal tale concerning Christopher Columbus's response to detractors of his discovery of the New World. Hogarth uses the story as a parallel to what he considered his own discoveries in art.
The March of the Guards to Finchley, also known as The March to Finchley or The March of the Guards, is a 1750 oil-on-canvas painting by English artist William Hogarth, owned by and on display at the Foundling Museum. Hogarth was well known for his satirical works, and The March of the Guards to Finchley has been said to have given full scope to this sense of satire; it was described by Hogarth himself as "steeped in humour".
A Just View of the British Stage or Three Heads are Better than One is an unsigned 1724 engraving attributed to the English artist William Hogarth. It is a satirical view of the management of British plays and mocks the subjects as degenerate. It forms part of an attack on the tastes of the theatre which Hogarth mounted in earnest between 1723 with Masquerades and Operas and 1727 with Masquerade Ticket.
Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme is an early print by William Hogarth, created in 1721 and widely published from 1724. It caricatures the financial speculation, corruption and credulity that caused the South Sea Bubble in England in 1720–21. The print is often considered the first editorial cartoon or as a precursor of the form.
Captain Lord George Graham in his Cabin is a 1745 oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Hogarth. A conversational picture, it shows Captain Lord George Graham, of the Royal Navy, in the cabin of his ship with several people.
The Bad Taste of the Town is an early print by the British artist William Hogarth, published in February 1723/24. The small print – 5 inches (13 cm) by 6 inches (15 cm) – mocks the contemporary fashion for foreign culture, including Palladian architecture, pantomimes based on the Italian commedia dell'arte, masquerades, and Italian opera. The work combines two printmaking techniques – etching and engraving – with etched lines made in the plate using acid and engraved lines marked using a burin.
The Lady's Last Stake, originally entitled Piquet: or Virtue in Danger, is a painting by William Hogarth, c. 1759. The work is a conversation piece, capturing the moment when the woman has to make a fateful decision: to be ruined financially, or morally. It was one of Hogarth's last works, commissioned by James Caulfeild, 4th Viscount Charlemont, who allowed Hogarth to select the subject and price.
Before and After is a pair of comic paintings by British painter William Hogarth. He made two painted versions in 1730–31. The first version showed an exterior scene in a wooded glade, based on contemporary French pastoral fête galante, while a second version moved the scene indoors. Hogarth made engravings based on the second version in 1736. In each pair, based on the position and appearance of the subjects, the first painting shows the couple before and the second after sexual intercourse.