Hogarth

On a warm Friday night in 1732, a rowdy group of friends set out from a pub. They are beginning a 'peregrination' that will take them through the scurrilous streets of Georgian London and down the Thames as far as the Isle of Sheppey. And among them is an up-and-coming engraver and painter, just beginning to make a name for himself: William Hogarth. Hogarth's work has come to define early-Georgian Britain; and it speaks to us with equal relevance today. Here, for the first time in over twenty years, Jacqueline Riding brings the artist - and his world - to vivid and detailed life. Following in his own footsteps, Hogarth illuminates an ambitious self-made man, a philanthropist, satirist, devoted husband and an artist who aspired to the highest principles even while charting humanity's lowest vices.