DIARY

VISIT

Master painter

From the depraved squalor depicted in Gin Lane to the wickedly satirical Marriage A-la Mode, a set of prints espousing the dangers of arranged marriages among the upper class, William Hogarth’s artworks shocked – and enthralled – 18th-century England.

But his works weren’t produced in a creative vacuum. For the first time, Tate Britain are displaying more than 60 of Hogarth’s masterpieces alongside 18th-century European works. The exhibition considers how societal shifts impacted art at the time, in Hogarth’s native Britain and on the continent.

For instance, the pleasures of 18th-century Europe as well as its stark inequalities were brought to life by Hogarth and a slew of European artists, who invented a new way of painting modern life. Hogarth’s 1734 A Rake’s Progress – showing the rise and fall of a young man consumed by vice – is displayed alongside Italian artist Guiseppe Crespi’s The Flea (1707-09), another example of urban storytelling.

Hogarth and Europe

Tate Britain, London /