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february 26, 2016 - National gallery of Denmark

A Harlot’s Progress and Other Stories at the National Gallery of Denmark

A Harlot’s Progress and Other Stories

Prostitution, poverty, violence, drunkenness and deceit. A new exhibition at the SMK focuses on the British artist and satirist #williamhogarth (1697–1764). His original series offered wry commentaries on eighteenth-century city life, and he is now regarded as one of the first major English artists.
A young country girl arrives in London in search of work. Instead she ends up a prostitute, and her life spirals steadily downwards, bringing stints in prison and venereal disease. With the exhibition #williamhogarth. A Harlot’s Progress and Other Stories (14 April – 7 August 2016) the SMK turns back time to visit eighteenth-century city life in London.

The exhibition presents work by the British artist and satirist #williamhogarth (1697–1764), who invented a new kind of narrative picture series that served up satirical and moral points with acerbic wit. His style of social critique was unique for the time, focusing on many highly topical subjects: Prostitution, poverty, violence, drunkenness, deceit, self-aggrandisement and desire.

Three series hold a particularly prominent position in Hogarth’s oeuvre: A Harlot’s Progress (1732), A Rake’s Progress (1735) and Marriage à-la-mode (1745). Each series describes a main protagonist who strives to climb the rungs of the class ladder, but loses their way in debauchery, heading directly for self-destruction and death.

Stories about modern life 
In his autobiographical notes Hogarth states that his pictures are scenes from a play and his subjects are actors strutting soundlessly on the stage. His stories became highly successful, attracting a large audience that included the lower echelons of society as well as the elite. Hogarth insisted that a picture must capture the viewer’s attention by entertaining and pleasing the eye, thereby allowing the serious aspects of its subject to gradually sink in as the narrative progresses towards its tragic climax.

Hogarth’s art is closely linked to London and city life. Around the year 1700 the city had swelled to a population of 600,000, making it the largest city in Europe. He made daily records of the chaotic urban crowds, of all the many and varied forms of life unfolding in the city’s streets and houses; he had a particularly keen eye for the contrasts between different social strata and how they met and clashed.
Works from the Royal Collection of Graphic Arts 
William Hogarth. A Harlot’s Progress and Other Stories is an exhibition of works from The Royal Collection of Graphic Arts, which is one of the oldest collections of prints and drawings in the world. Housing more than 240,000 works, the collection has roots that date back to the sixteenth century.



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