William Hogarth is unquestionably one of the greatest English artists and a man of remarkably individual character and thought. He is the great innovator in English art. On one hand, he was the first to paint themes from Shakespeare, Milton and the theatre, and the founder of a wholly original genre of moral history, which was long known as Hogarthian. On the other, he investigated the aesthetic principles of his art, which resulted in his book “The Analysis of Beauty”(1753).

William Hogarth was born on 10 November, 1697 - i.e. six days after the celebration of King William's birthday on 4 Nov.: hence, probably, his name. He was the 5th child of Richard Hogarth, a schoolmaster and classical scholar from the north of England who had come to London in the mid-1680s. His father’s premature death in 1718 affected Hogarth’s early life, his training and forced him to earn money.

In February 1713/14, Hogarth began his apprenticeship to a plate engraver, Ellis Gamble, who was a distant relation. By April 1720, he set up an independent business as an engraver. His first works included a number of commissions for small etched cards and bookplates, and in 1721 he produced two inventive engraved allegories The South Sea Scheme and The Lottery, which aroused considerable attention. His first success as a painter was in the ‘conversational pieces’, in which figure informal groups of family and friends surrounded by customary things from their everyday life. In 1729, he married a daughter of his painting teacher Sir James Thornhill Jane Thornhill, without her parents' consent and after an elopement. Reconciliation soon ensued. They moved into the Great Piazza of Covent Garden with the Thornhills, where WH could use a studio appropriate to a portraitist.

Probably with the encouragement of Thonhill Hogarth turns to painting. His first of the series - The scene from The Beggar’s Opera, the picture of an actual stage, brought him great success, and at about about 1730, he was commissioned for several versions. The result of this accomplishment was the idea of his own ‘theater’: the creation of ‘pictorial dramas’ and reaching wider public through the means of engraving. The first successful series The Harlot’s Progress, the first "modern history" series, probably suggested by various contemporary incidents and trials involving robbers, prostitutes, procuresses and rakes, extensively and repeatedly reported in the newspapers; especially the trial for rape of Colonel Charter is, an infamous rake, convicted and then pardoned by the King, who was the occasion for many pamphlets and prints (and may have inspired Richardson's "Mr. B." in Pamela). Also inspired by Defoe's Moll Flanders and Steele's Spectator campaign against prostitution. The six paintings (which have not survived) describing the fate of "Mary Hackabout" were completed in 1731 and the subscription for the copper plates (engraved by WH himself) opened with great success, curiosity being aroused by the complete novelty of the undertaking, with many topical details and allusions and several recognizable faces. The immense popular success of the series led to piratical imitations, pamphlets and poems. In 1735 comes another series of paintings A Rake's Progress, Hogarth 's most Swiftian satire, an association which Swift himself acknowledged in his poem "The Legion" (1736), 219-230. The painting and the engraving of the series describing the life of "Tom Rakewell" from the gaming table to Bedlam is very uneven, with a notable tendency towards violence and disorder and some unusual flaws. Hogarth’ satires were serious moral and social satires, besides being good paintings. In 1935, he opened his own academy in St. Martyn's Lane.

In 1738 – 1743: Jean-Baptiste Van Loo comes to London where he soon asserts himself as the most fashionable portrait painter until his departure in 1742, superseding all English portrait painters such as Vanderbank or Higher. Against this new foreign challenge, and that offered by the young, successful, and Italianate Allan Ramsay, Hogarth decides to become a portrait painter himself. In portraiture, Hogarth displays a great variety and originality. The charm of childhood, a delightful delicacy of color appear in The Graham Children (1742). The portrait heads of his servants are penetrating studies of character: Hogarth's Servants. (c.1750). The painting of Captain Thomas Coram (1740), the philanthropic sea captain who took a leading part in the foundation of the Foundling Hospital, adapts the formality of the ceremonial portrait to a democratic level. The painter’s character is reflected faithfully in his forthright Self-Portrait with Pug-Dog (1745).          

The quality of Hogarth as an artist is seen to advantage in his sketches and one sketch in particular, the famous The Shrimp Girl (c.1740-1743) quickly executed with a limited range of color, stands alone in his work, taking its place among the masterpieces of the world in its harmony of form and content, its freshness and vitality. 1743 – 1745: Marriage-a-la-Mode advertised for subscription, in six copper-plates engraved "by the best Masters in Paris" (WH himself doing the faces).     

A trip to Paris In 1748 with a few fellow artists, just after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle for preliminary sketches of the Calais Gate, caused Hogarth to be carried before the governor as a spy. Hogarth disliked everything he saw in France and in 1749 he paints in revenge The Gate of Calais, or The Roast-Beef of Old England , a painting and a print, recording his recent misadventure. Later this year The Hogarths buy a villa in Chiswick by the Thames, where WH spends as muchtime as he can with his wife and his sister Anne. Apparently the Hogarths had no children.                 

1755: The idea of a state academy being again the occasion of debates and pamphlets, WH seems to have withdrawn or at least absented himself from the St. Martin's Lane academy, where the state academy had many supporters, and whose leading figure now was Reynolds. He had become the most successful portrait painter of the day, the darling of the fashionable, world whom Hogarth had alienated. Hogarth's views are reflected in his friend Rouquet's essay The State of the Arts in England (first published in French in 1754 as L'Etat des Arts en Angleterre). However, either because he felt that the idea could not be defeated, or because lie thought that it would be a good idea to support a counter-project, WH joined the Society of Arts which William Shipley had founded the year before to offer artistic training, organize joint exhibitions and give prizes to young artists, and where lie was very active in favour of poor artists until lie resigned in 1760.           

1756: Discouraged by the difficulties encountered in the engraving of the Election series, WH announces in the press that he intends to abandon the comic histories and retreat into portrait painting - as if to challenge Reynolds. Most of the portraits of these years are characteristically unfinished or without backgrounds, some in the manner of Rembrandt's chiaroscuro; e.g. David Garrick and his Wife, Lady Thornhill, Saunders Welch, Lord Charlemont, Boy in a Green Coat and above all Hogarth's Servants and The Shrimp Girl.         

1757: WH is appointed Sergeant-Painter to the King, an honorary position (Ј10 a year) which Thornhill had held before him and passed to his son John, who died that year. But this sinecure implied the monopoly on all the painting or gilding made in the royal palaces and stables, on ships, tents, banners, coaches, etc.; the actual work was done by deputies and the Sergeant-Painter received lucrative fees. Hogarth died in 1764 in London and is buried in Chiswick cemetery.