Through an open section of wall above the distiller’s barrels, a hanged man looks down on the wares that caused his downfall. The reception by the general public is difficult to gauge. The first (proof) and second states of Beer Street were issued with the image of the Frenchman being lifted by the blacksmith, this was substituted in 1759 by the more commonly seen third state in which the Frenchman was replaced by the pavior or drayman fondling the housemaid, and a wall added behind the sign-painter. At the brothel door the infamous rake Colonel Francis Charteris and his pimp, John Gourlay, are pictured awaiting Moll’s arrival with anticipation. His paintings of contemporary scenes tell us much about 18th century life.

The verses beneath the images on both prints were written by Hogarth's friend, the Rev. [21], The sign-painter is the most difficult figure of the two images to characterise. [23] Paulson suggests that he is the lone "beautiful" figure in the scene.
The vast numbers of prints of Beer Street and Gin Lane and The Four Stages of Cruelty may have generated profits for Hogarth, but the wide availability of the prints meant that individual examples did not generally command high prices. Learning archives, However perhaps his greatest legacy is that out of his work arose the ‘comic strip’ that we know today. At her feet sits a half-naked, near skeletal figure clutching a bottle of gin and a cup. names, [6] By 1750 over a quarter of all residences in St Giles parish in London were gin shops, and most of these also operated as receivers of stolen goods and co-ordinating spots for prostitution.[7].

The carving of one ornament alone in the Grapes gin-shop, Old Street Road, cost 100 pounds: the workmanship was by one of the first carvers in wood in London. The viewer’s eye is immediately caught by the figure in the foreground: a drunken mother who blithely lets her baby tumble from her arms. Having already produced some moral works in the early 1730s Hogarth returned to the genre with Beer Street and Gin Lane among other prints. An early impression showed a scrawny Frenchman being ejected from the scene by the burly blacksmith who in later prints holds aloft a leg of mutton or ham (Paulson suggests the Frenchman was removed to prevent confusion with the ragged sign-painter).[20]. The only businesses that flourish serve the gin industry: gin sellers; a distiller (the aptly named Kilman); the pawnbroker where the avaricious Mr. Gripe greedily takes the vital possessions (the carpenter offers his saw and the housewife her cooking utensils) of the alcoholic residents of the street in return for a few pennies to feed their habit; and the undertaker, for whom Hogarth implies at least a handful of new customers from this scene alone.

Perhaps we can find out from the works of Jane…, John Constable was born in Suffolk in 1776 and is one of Britain’s most famous landscape artists. At almost the same time and on the same subject, Hogarth's friend Henry Fielding published An Inquiry into the Late Increase in Robbe… Prohibition was seriously considered in Britain at this time, but fortunately it did not occur: the United States’ failed experiment with prohibition between 1919 and 1933 has shown the crime problems caused by such legislation.

No foreign influences pollute what is a fiercely nationalistic image. [45], "On the genius and character of Hogarth: with some remarks on a passage in the writings of the late Mr. Barry", "Pfft: Satirical Pinpricks Deflating Pomposity and Power", Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme, Sigismunda mourning over the Heart of Guiscardo, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beer_Street_and_Gin_Lane&oldid=981540536, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 2 October 2020, at 23:10. On the one hand his portraiture reflects the civilised world of the modest country gentleman whilst on the other, his satirical works feature the seedy, coarse and debauched side of urban society.
[20], Thomas Clerk, in his 1812 The Works of William Hogarth, writes that the sign-painter has been suggested as a satire on Jean-Étienne Liotard (called John Stephen by Clerk), a Swiss portrait painter and enameller whom Horace Walpole praised for his attention to detail and realism, mentioning he was, "... devoid of imagination, and one would think memory, he could render nothing but what he saw before his eyes. Some believe that the tailors serve another purpose, in that Hogarth shows them continuing to toil while all the other inhabitants of the street, including their master, pause to refresh themselves. In contrast to his Gin Lane counterpart, the prosperous Gripe, who displays expensive-looking cups in his upper window (a sign of his flourishing business), Pinch displays only a wooden contraption, perhaps a mousetrap, in his upper window, while he is forced to take his beer through a window in the door, which suggests his business is so unprofitable as to put the man in fear of being seized for debt. exhibition catalogues, While Hogarth’s Beer Street may seem comically idyllic, it should be remembered that the beer of the day was not as strong as most ales and lagers today.

Brueghel's compositions are also mirrored in the layers of detail in Hogarth's two images. James Townley, and the original copperplates are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. This site uses cookies to help us track performance and improve our service. The gin crisis was severe. The first plate (above) shows the naïve Moll arriving in London to be greeted by the pox-ridden Elizabeth Needham, a notorious madam and brothel-keeper who is trying to persuade her to join her house of ill repute. The only merchants who prosper in Gin Lane are purveyors of the beverage and undertakers (signified by the symbol of the coffin in front of the shop). Gin Lane's collapsing buildings and social order provide a stark contrast to Beer Street's good order, industry, construction, and gentle amorousness. William Hogarth FRSA was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist. Hogarth therefore contraets the effects of this traditional English beverage to those of this cheap, foreign one. [28] Paulson thinks it likely that they planned the literature and the imagery together as a campaign.[8]. The iconic Gin Lane, with its memorable composition, has lent itself to reinterpretation by modern satirists. During World War One, future Prime Minister David Lloyd George famously declared, ‘We are fighting Germany, Austria and drink, and so far as I can see the greatest of those three deadly foes is drink’.


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