With 'this mighty portrait', as the artist himself described it, Hogarth graduated from the conversation piece to the grand style with almost casual ease.
Provoked by the arrival in London of the French portraitist Industry and Idleness, William Hogarth produced this, his first essay in grand manner portraiture, 'without the practice of having done thousands, which every other face painter has before he arrives at doing as well'.The artist's characteristic immodesty is Justified by this seminal work, which vies with the glamour of continental baroque portraiture, whilst moderating its ostentation to produce a more domesticated and approachable icon of Industry and Idleness.
Marriage a la mode, Industry and Idleness, Rake's progress, Beggar's Opera, A Harlot's Progress, An Election Series, Before, After, Beer Street, Gin Lane, Newgate, Tyburn, Analysis of beauty, Calais gate
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