Khodayari 1

Adriana Khodayari

Dr. Kelly Ingleright-Telgenhoff

Art History 3311

August 3 2010

Holy! Holy! Holy!

There have been more prisons in London than in any other European city in 1700’s. “The

Fleet Prison was the oldest of them…it was famous for its ‘secrets’ unlawful marriages,

degraded clergymen, marring houses …and the watch-maker Dr Gaynam who impersonated a

clergyman”1 This was the place where Hogarth spends his young life due to his father’s financial

trouble and perhaps on the way to a rude and unfair life which made him to denounce all the

social madness. He later reflected his dissatisfactions in his prints and paintings.

What was the purpose of such pungent criticism of English society’s behaviors at the

time? Hogarth courageously attacks the selfishness of the bourgeoisie, its vanity, insolence, and

its desire for honor and mockery when they looking for titles of nobility, laziness and conceit of

the aristocracy. He denounces the conduct of the Methodist clergy and ignorance of Continental

European art lovers in his works such as, “The four stages of Cruelty (1751), “Marriage a-la

Mode” (1742-3), “A Rake's Progress” (1732–33), The Harlot's Progress (1731) and among many

others.

The later eighteenth century, is regarded as the beginning of “a new dark age”2, in which

“there was a progressive degradation of the standards of life”3, under the “blight of a growing

industrialism, while the earlier part of the century is considered a golden age”4, one of those
1
Peter Ackroyd, “London the Biography” 1st-ed. Published by Nan Talase. Printed New York 2001. Page 307.
2
Ibid.,page 308
3
Ibid, Page 307.

4
Espasa, Historia del Arte. Printed in Barcelona-Spain1999. Page. 913
 Khodayari 2

periods when English working-class prosperity was at its height. The social history of London

tenaciously and vigorously refuses to adjust itself to this formula. There is a cleavage, certainly,

about the middle of the century, but it is improvement, not deterioration, which can be traced

about 1750 and becomes marked between 1780 and 1820.“London was growing more rapidly in

bricks and mortars than in population as people left the crowded lanes of the city for the newer

parts of the town but all this social movement”5 was on the perception of Hogarth.

Hogarth plays the “role of moralist and critic, which seeks to bring back to the men by

the path of righteousness and with the aim of having a national sentiment and patriotic to their

homeland”6. He hates the rules dictated by the Academy, as it believed it did not reflect what is

lived and even more did not seek a national identity; the academy became a puppet for Hogarth,

more of the rules as French and Italian art and architecture (specially the Palladian style). He

fells the “academy theory of painting had become overcharged with outworn beliefs, that no

longer responsive to the demands of modern life”7 . But at the same time, in most of his work he

uses the images from other artists like Rembrandt, Le Brun, Raimondi and Correggio.

Hogarth sees one of his most odious criticisms in religious fanaticism, and superstition.

In “Delineate Enthusiasm” (1762) and “Cruelty, superstitious and Fanatics” (1762) Hogarth

claimed by the satire of parishioners and especially the Methodist bishops to be the opposite of

what they proclaim. In “Cruelty, Superstitious and Fanatics” we are shown inside a

congregation, in which its members act as if they had lost their mind is a total madness, listening

to loud sermon by one of the most notorious bishops of all time, George Whitefield.

Near the pulpit to the right is a “sonometer”8 which measures the level of outcry.

5
Ibid., Page. 913
6
Timothy Edwin, “William Hogarth and the Aesthetics of Nationalism”.Hunington Library Quarterly. Ed-
University of California 2001- pag-384.
7
Ibid., pag-384.
 Khodayari 3

According to historians Whitefield had a very powerful voice. The sound meter seems more an

instrument of torture, at the top has a mouth wide open while the instrument hangs by its nose

with a big hook ... of the mouth “come the words ‘blood, blood, blood’ which was what most

Whitefield repeated constantly during his sermon9”.

Whitefield is presented in the pulpit with his arms raised in a theatrical gesture; in his left

hand he is wearing a scarf that symbolizes grief, and holding a puppet of a devil with a grill in its

hand. In his right hand, there is a puppet of a witch flying on her broom while “Enthusiasm

Delineate” witch is supplanted by the image of God with the symbol of the trinity. Hogarth

satirizes the bishop as an outrageous charlatan, without conscience as “the portrait of John

Wollaston, 1742”10.The bishop was the opposite of what Hogarth represents at least into the

physical description with exception that the bishop was a cross-eyed and in this aspect Hogarth

was not exaggerating. The text beside him has opened to a page reading, “I speak as a fool”11

In a small cloud on the right of the charlatan preacher, is the figure of a child with angel

wings, perhaps is a resented ghost of a dead orphan. He has a sign that says “Saint Trap Money”

and money from the poor and money from the bourgeois. The collector box is a mouse trap that

is under the pulpit; in effect Whitefield was the best collector of alms and money from the

freighted congregation. A mouse trap for a congregation who use live like a mouse in a crowded

city and the misery they have is catch by Whitefield?

Hogarth further represents the bishop with a clerical robe and under the suit as harlequin

or clown; waving his arms like a madman. Not far from the bishop, there are windows with thick

iron bars as they often were used in mad houses. All exaggerated expression of the preacher is

8
Bernd Krysmansky, “ We see a ghost: Hogart’s satire on Methodists. The art bulletin, vol 8 No. 2 (June 1998) page
295.JSTOR August 11-2010
9
Ibid., page 295.
10
Ibid, page 295.
11
2 Corinth 2:23. Bible.
 Khodayari 4

nothing more than a critique of the Methodists. Hogarth tries to demonstrate it meticulously

when the preacher shakes his head and loses his wig to reveals his shaved head style of the

Jesuits. “Shaven crown of a Jesuit, an allusion to the widely held option that Methodist were in

fact the papist”12.

All religious fanaticism has nothing more than a repressed sexual desire as we’ve seen in

Marriage a-la Mode when the lady extends her body with pleasure”13, Hogarth with his vision of

a superb artist can clearly see, and express it in a way that best knows how. One factor related to

sexual desire is the great thermometer located a bottom of the work. The thermometer was

represented by cartoonists as elements of measuring the behavior of a woman, “and not by

accident near the thermometer, there are two women in different sexual attitudes”14. Another

aspect of the thermometer is to measure the level of religious fervor of the congregation. The

temperature is measured by word like madness, ecstasy, lust, agony and suicide. Lust was

heavily marked and suicide next to the brain in the lowest part of the thermometer and it was so

common in London, after all “by 1760 London was the suicide capital of Europe15” that people

were accustomed to seeing dead bodies everywhere, perhaps with the purpose of being close to

God.

The first woman giving birth rabbits in the gesture of “Cruelty, superstitious and

Fanatics” was Mary Toft seems to confuse everyone with her ideas of baby rabbits instead of

baby human, which is a symbol of unbridled sexual desire, while in “Enthusiasm Delineate” the

same figure of Mary Toft in ecstasy from her belly hugging the small image of Christ, a clear

critique of Spanish mysticism. This posture was taken from Correggio in his Compianto su
12
Bernd Krysmansky, “ We see a ghost: Hogart’s satire on Methodists. The art bulletin, vol 8 No. 2 (June 1998)
13
Timothy Edwin, “William Hogarth and the Aesthetics of Nationalism”.Hunington Library Quarterly. Ed-
University of California 2001- pag-386.
14
Terry Castle, “The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century culture and the Invention of the Uncanny” (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1995),
15
Peter Ackroyd, “London the Biography” 1st-ed. ISBN 0-385-49770-9 Printed in NY 2001. Page 249.
 Khodayari 5

Cristo Morto. In the case of “Saint Teresa of Jesus, her love for Jesus becomes more earthly than

divine”16.

The other woman is a young girl, who was defeated by the blandishments of another

preacher or perhaps a rich man. Hogarth took a model from Charles Le Brun in Pure Love, A

method to learn to design passions. First in “Cruelty, superstitious and Fanatics” the man in

fancy French outfit introduces a figure in the corset of the young woman while in “Enthusiasm

Delineate”, the figure drops and the preacher's hand is placed on her chest , sexual abuse by

those to people’s ignorance or innocence of youth, “virgin young woman were available

everywhere”17 . Like in Marriage a-la Mode in scene of the inspection were that little girl was

given to the nobleman perhaps by her mom.

The congregation of hell is similar in both, scream and shouts with the preaching of the

speaker. Something striking are the figures of Jesus, in the hands of the congregation and how

they insatiably devour them as if the salvation of the soul. Again a reference to the Methodist

fanaticism and even more to Catholic doctrine, ‘The body of Christ’ and the idolatry of plaster

images. In fact this image of Jesus has a resemblance from Rembrandt in Hundred Guilder Print.

As for the puppets of “Cruelty, superstitious and Fanatics”, these represent ghosts, like

Mrs. Veal who appeared to her friend the day after her death. The puppet located in the center of

Julius Caesar, looking into a broken mirror with daggers stuck in their body, and finally the ghost

of a noble Sir George Villiers, who returns to announce the imminent death of his own son the

Duke of Buckingham. “Several Whitefield followers were large illiterate proletarians, the kind of

people who are more susceptible to superstition and believing in ghosts and spells”18. It was

believed at the time according to an article published on August 23, 1753, “that if a girl of eight

16
Espasa. Historia del Arte. Printed Barcelona Spain 1999. Arte del Barroco español. pag. 687
17
Richard Baum, Hogarth and Fielding as social critiques. The Art Bulletin Vol 16, No 1 (mar 1934
18
Bernd Krysmansky, “ We see a ghost: Hogart’s satire on Methodists. The art bulletin, vol 8 No. 2 (June 1998)
 Khodayari 6

years old decided to wear a pointy hat surely she would be a Witch ... and then take the so-called

'imps', small creatures like cats, toads, rats and others animals and she would feed them with her

own blood”19. The Holy Spirit has the same properties as a ghost and a witch because after all

are ideas of the supernatural world.

One of the most interesting elements is the chandelier resembling a grotesque creature.

The threatening celestial mechanism is inscribed: “‘A new and correct globe of hell by Romaine'

one eye reads ‘Bottomless Pit’, the other ‘Molten Lead Lake’; the nose is inscribed ‘Pitch and

Tar Rivers’, the mouth ‘Eternal Damnation Gulf’; one cheek reads ‘Parts Unknown’, the other

‘Brimstone Ocean’; the equator line is marked ‘Horrid Zone’ and the small sphere above

‘Deserts of new Purgatory’”20. All of these places in the lamp allude to the Catholic doctrine to

horrify the congregation with the hellish message so people can feel they already are in hell. The

only one who looks in his sense is the infidel, a Turk perhaps who patiently is watching the

whole scene with his pipe in his hand. Perhaps he was a merchant who live in London?

Hogarth lived in a period of time where the commercialization of art had become a

bargain; the schemes used by the artists were repeated over and over again. So he decided to

change the course of his artistic approach, with series of paintings and engravings moralizing and

criticize. The most remarkable is that although historians give either opinion about his work,

Hogarth was able to interpret to perfection a popular language that can be understood without

any difficulties of academic obstacles. This is one of the main reasons why William Hogarth

became the supporter of British art; he knew how to communicate through his work without fear

19
See Hannsferdinand D6bler, Hexenwahn: Die Geschichte einer Verfolgung (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1977), 198 and
ill. on p. 189. In the Middle Ages the cat was considered an attribute of witches
20
Henry Wharton includes "Purgatory" among the "peculiar doctrines of the Church of Rome" that "derive their
original from Enthusiastic Visions and Revelations"; Wharton, The Enthusiasm of the Church of Rome
Demonstrated in Some Observations Upon the Life of Ignatius Loyola (London: R. Chiswell, 1688), It is certainly
no coincidence that the inscription on the small globe incredulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism reads "Deserts of
New Purgatory."
 Khodayari 7

and with absolute sincerity. “Hogarth is full of both; nor between the genteel and the vulgar,

because Hogarth is a satirist of actual life high as well as low nor between the beautiful and the

grotesque21.

21
Carrassat, P. F. R., Maestros de la pintura, Spes Editorial, S.L., Barcelona, 2005. ISBN 84-8332-597-7