SOURCE: Paulson, Ronald. “Politics and Aesthetics: Hogarth in 1759.” In British Art 1740-1820: Essays in Honor of Robert R. Wark, edited by Guilland Sutherland, pp. 25-56. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1992.

In the following essay, Paulson examines Hogarth's work as a response to the changing aesthetic and political contexts of the 1750s.

The 1750s marked a period of intense and varied activity in Hogarth's career. At the beginning of the decade he had gambled with high stakes when he wrote his Analysis of Beauty (published in 1753), and the response had been partisan, ad hominem, centered in the insurgents of the St. Martin's Lane Academy. Following this outburst, he had buried himself in the elaborate Four Prints of an Election, which were not completely published until 1758. By then the political issue of the general election, and the ministerial juggling of the Duke of Newcastle (the “great Electioneer”), had been superseded...