Hogarth was the first, great, visual artist born and bred in England. His achievement is remarkable for its range, quality and originality. He created major works in book illustration, individual portraiture, small group portraiture, or “conversation pieces”, and grand history-painting. Most memorably of all, however, he created a new genre of narrative comic history-paintings, or “modern moral subjects”, as he described them in his Autobiographical Notes, which established satire and comedy in art as high and respectable categories worthy of serious attention. He then used his skills, acquired as an apprentice silver-engraver, to trans

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First published 25 October 2002

Citation: Gordon, Ian. "William Hogarth". The Literary Encyclopedia. 25 October 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2167, accessed 9 February 2010.]