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Having hit upon a winning formula with his narrative series, Hogarth then produced his second series on a “modern moral subject”: the life of a rake, a slang term for a debauched womanizer. Hogarth pointedly christened his protagonist Tom Rakewell and told the story of his life in eight paintings and subsequent engravings. The first depicts Tom receiving his inheritance after his miserly father’s death. Having been denied any privileges during his youth, the naïve Tom is ill prepared to handle his newfound wealth. He is shown trying to buy off Sarah Young, a woman he had promised to marry who is pregnant with his child. The second plate shows Tom enjoying new luxuries such as a well-appointed home and the attentions of instructors and tradesmen eager to take advantage of him. The third plate captures a scene in a tavern after a night of drunken carousing. Tom’s gambling habit is the subject of the fourth plate, which shows a magistrate attempting to arrest him for his debts. He is saved by the faithful Sarah Young, who pays his debts and keeps him out of prison. The next plate reveals Tom’s new moneymaking scheme is to marry a wealthy old woman. During the ceremony, Tom avoids looking at his aged bride, peering instead at her comely young maid. In the background, Sarah Young, holding her child, attempts with her mother’s help to prevent the wedding. The sixth plate places Tom in a gambling house. Having lost his elegant wig in a fit of rage at his losses, he shakes his fist toward heaven at his misfortune, oblivious to the smoke in the background that indicates the room is on fire. Hogarth next depicts Tom in prison for his debts, all of his schemes having come to naught. As his shrewish wife disparages him for his misdeeds, Sarah Young, visiting with their child, faints in distress at Tom’s fate. The setting for the final plate is Bedlam Hospital, where Tom will spend his final days in madness. The grim setting and Tom’s grotesque expression and half-clothed body convey the dire results of his reckless decisions.
The third image, the tavern scene, is full of emblematic details that tell the story of Tom’s dissolution. Tom and a male companion have, after a night of heavy drinking, repaired to the well-known Rose Tavern to continue their revelry. They enjoy the attentions of women who are most certainly prostitutes. Tom has been rendered senseless by drink; his eyes are half-open, and his leg is propped on the table at an awkward angle. He is caressed by a woman who simultaneously removes his watch, which shows that it is three o’clock in the morning, and hands it to an accomplice. A black maid behind them enjoys the foolish scene before her.
Tom has apparently used his sword to slash the portraits of Roman emperors on the walls around him, but now the sword rests unsheathed by his side, hinting at Tom’s impotence. The battered lantern below him, symbol of the night’s watch, suggests that he has come to blows with an unarmed watchman. The emperors whose portraits have been slashed are symbols of virtues such as stoicism, which Tom does not possess. The image of only one has been spared; the extravagant and brutal Nero—the depraved emperor who, according to legend, played his fiddle as Rome burned—still presides over the scene. A map on the wall of “Totos Mundos,” the whole world, is being set alight by a servant girl holding a candle, suggesting the entire world is enflamed by immoral behavior that will bring it to an end.
In the center of the composition, a group of women sit at the table drinking. Two are engaged in a dispute, which has prompted one to spit gin at her opponent, who brandishes a knife. A third woman holds a cup in one hand and a bottle in the other, while another drinks directly from the punchbowl. Musicians in the background, a harpist and a horn player, compete with a pregnant singer who enters at right hoping to entertain the group with her song “Black Joke.” Also entering from the right is a male servant who holds a candle and a large silver platter. The woman disrobing in the foreground will use these props to perform a lewd dance. [1] The pockmarks on her face indicate that she suffers from venereal disease, and the pills scattered from the container at Tom’s feet suggest that he suffers from the same malady. In the bottom right corner, the remains of a dinner spilled on the floor include a chicken stuck with a fork, symbolic of the dancing woman who will, in all likelihood, soon be penetrated.
Accompanying all eight plates are verses by Hogarth’s friend John Hoadly. [2] For the tavern scene, Hoadly composed the following:
O vanity of youthful blood,
So by misuse to poison good!
Woman, form’d for social love,
Fairest gift of powers above!
Source of every household blessing,
All charms in innocence possessing:
But turn’d to vice, all plagues above,
Foe to thy being, foe to love!
Guest divine, to outward viewing,
Abler minister of ruin!
And thou, no less of gift divine,
Sweet poison of misused wine!
With freedom led to every part,
And secret chamber of ye heart;
Dost thou thy friendly host betray,
And shew thy riotous gang ye way,
To enter in with covert treason,
O’erthrow the drowsy guard of reason,
To ransack the abandon’d place,
And revel there with wild excess?
In developing his various series, Hogarth often returned to his plate and made minor changes. There are three states of A Rake’s Progress: The Tavern Scene; the second state bears the inscription “Invented, Painted, Engrav’d, & Publish’d by Wm. Hogarth June 25, 1735. According to Act of Parliament.” Barbara Babcock Millhouse purchased the print for inclusion in a 1992 exhibition at Reynolda House on the subject of William Sidney Mount’s The Card Players, circa 1847. The addition of the tavern scene engraving from The Rake’s Progress allowed exhibition visitors to draw parallels between Hogarth’s and Mount’s use of symbolic objects to convey moral meanings.
Notes:
[1] Ronald Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works (London: Print Room, 1989), 94.
[2] Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works, 91.
ProvenanceBarbara B. Millhouse, New York. [1]
Notes:
[1] Loan Agreement.
Exhibition History1992
William Sidney Mount: The Card Players
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (1992)
2023
Coexistence: Nature vs. Nurture
Reynolda House Museum of Amerian Art (4/7/2023 - 9/24/2023)
Published References
DepartmentCollection of Barbara B. Millhouse
A Rake's Progress: The Tavern Scene
Artist
William Hogarth
(1697 - 1764)
Date1735
Mediumetching
DimensionsFrame: 23 5/8 x 25 1/8 in. (60 x 63.8 cm)
Other (engraving plate, including inscription): 14 x 16 in. (35.6 x 40.6 cm)
Other (engraving plate, without inscription): 15 1/4 in. (38.7 cm)
SignedWm. Hogarth
Credit LineCourtesy of Barbara B. Millhouse
CopyrightPublic Domain
Object numberIL2003.1.18
DescriptionEighteenth-century English artist William Hogarth is renowned for his series of moralizing tales. These were initially inspired by his own 1730 painting of a woman rising from bed at noontime, her nightclothes in disarray. Contemporary viewers would have understood from clues in the painting that the woman was a prostitute. It was a titillating image and a successful composition for an artist who had only recently taken up painting. But Hogarth’s brilliance lay in his next idea—to construct a narrative of the woman’s life in a series of paintings, creating two images that take place before the bedroom scene and three after. He then engraved the six images and sold them to an eager audience. The series was an instant success.Having hit upon a winning formula with his narrative series, Hogarth then produced his second series on a “modern moral subject”: the life of a rake, a slang term for a debauched womanizer. Hogarth pointedly christened his protagonist Tom Rakewell and told the story of his life in eight paintings and subsequent engravings. The first depicts Tom receiving his inheritance after his miserly father’s death. Having been denied any privileges during his youth, the naïve Tom is ill prepared to handle his newfound wealth. He is shown trying to buy off Sarah Young, a woman he had promised to marry who is pregnant with his child. The second plate shows Tom enjoying new luxuries such as a well-appointed home and the attentions of instructors and tradesmen eager to take advantage of him. The third plate captures a scene in a tavern after a night of drunken carousing. Tom’s gambling habit is the subject of the fourth plate, which shows a magistrate attempting to arrest him for his debts. He is saved by the faithful Sarah Young, who pays his debts and keeps him out of prison. The next plate reveals Tom’s new moneymaking scheme is to marry a wealthy old woman. During the ceremony, Tom avoids looking at his aged bride, peering instead at her comely young maid. In the background, Sarah Young, holding her child, attempts with her mother’s help to prevent the wedding. The sixth plate places Tom in a gambling house. Having lost his elegant wig in a fit of rage at his losses, he shakes his fist toward heaven at his misfortune, oblivious to the smoke in the background that indicates the room is on fire. Hogarth next depicts Tom in prison for his debts, all of his schemes having come to naught. As his shrewish wife disparages him for his misdeeds, Sarah Young, visiting with their child, faints in distress at Tom’s fate. The setting for the final plate is Bedlam Hospital, where Tom will spend his final days in madness. The grim setting and Tom’s grotesque expression and half-clothed body convey the dire results of his reckless decisions.
The third image, the tavern scene, is full of emblematic details that tell the story of Tom’s dissolution. Tom and a male companion have, after a night of heavy drinking, repaired to the well-known Rose Tavern to continue their revelry. They enjoy the attentions of women who are most certainly prostitutes. Tom has been rendered senseless by drink; his eyes are half-open, and his leg is propped on the table at an awkward angle. He is caressed by a woman who simultaneously removes his watch, which shows that it is three o’clock in the morning, and hands it to an accomplice. A black maid behind them enjoys the foolish scene before her.
Tom has apparently used his sword to slash the portraits of Roman emperors on the walls around him, but now the sword rests unsheathed by his side, hinting at Tom’s impotence. The battered lantern below him, symbol of the night’s watch, suggests that he has come to blows with an unarmed watchman. The emperors whose portraits have been slashed are symbols of virtues such as stoicism, which Tom does not possess. The image of only one has been spared; the extravagant and brutal Nero—the depraved emperor who, according to legend, played his fiddle as Rome burned—still presides over the scene. A map on the wall of “Totos Mundos,” the whole world, is being set alight by a servant girl holding a candle, suggesting the entire world is enflamed by immoral behavior that will bring it to an end.
In the center of the composition, a group of women sit at the table drinking. Two are engaged in a dispute, which has prompted one to spit gin at her opponent, who brandishes a knife. A third woman holds a cup in one hand and a bottle in the other, while another drinks directly from the punchbowl. Musicians in the background, a harpist and a horn player, compete with a pregnant singer who enters at right hoping to entertain the group with her song “Black Joke.” Also entering from the right is a male servant who holds a candle and a large silver platter. The woman disrobing in the foreground will use these props to perform a lewd dance. [1] The pockmarks on her face indicate that she suffers from venereal disease, and the pills scattered from the container at Tom’s feet suggest that he suffers from the same malady. In the bottom right corner, the remains of a dinner spilled on the floor include a chicken stuck with a fork, symbolic of the dancing woman who will, in all likelihood, soon be penetrated.
Accompanying all eight plates are verses by Hogarth’s friend John Hoadly. [2] For the tavern scene, Hoadly composed the following:
O vanity of youthful blood,
So by misuse to poison good!
Woman, form’d for social love,
Fairest gift of powers above!
Source of every household blessing,
All charms in innocence possessing:
But turn’d to vice, all plagues above,
Foe to thy being, foe to love!
Guest divine, to outward viewing,
Abler minister of ruin!
And thou, no less of gift divine,
Sweet poison of misused wine!
With freedom led to every part,
And secret chamber of ye heart;
Dost thou thy friendly host betray,
And shew thy riotous gang ye way,
To enter in with covert treason,
O’erthrow the drowsy guard of reason,
To ransack the abandon’d place,
And revel there with wild excess?
In developing his various series, Hogarth often returned to his plate and made minor changes. There are three states of A Rake’s Progress: The Tavern Scene; the second state bears the inscription “Invented, Painted, Engrav’d, & Publish’d by Wm. Hogarth June 25, 1735. According to Act of Parliament.” Barbara Babcock Millhouse purchased the print for inclusion in a 1992 exhibition at Reynolda House on the subject of William Sidney Mount’s The Card Players, circa 1847. The addition of the tavern scene engraving from The Rake’s Progress allowed exhibition visitors to draw parallels between Hogarth’s and Mount’s use of symbolic objects to convey moral meanings.
Notes:
[1] Ronald Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works (London: Print Room, 1989), 94.
[2] Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works, 91.
ProvenanceBarbara B. Millhouse, New York. [1]
Notes:
[1] Loan Agreement.
Exhibition History1992
William Sidney Mount: The Card Players
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (1992)
2023
Coexistence: Nature vs. Nurture
Reynolda House Museum of Amerian Art (4/7/2023 - 9/24/2023)
Published References
Status
Not on view