Hogarth's China: Hogarth's Painting and Eighteenth-Century Ceramics

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Summary: Tharp celebrates Hogarth's 300th b'day with a fresh approach
Review: HOGARTH'S CHINA: Hogarth's Paintings and 18th Century Ceramics, by Lars Tharp, Merrell Holberton Publishers, London, 1997

Hogarth's 300th birthday was celebrated in 1997 with exhibits, symposia and new books. Lars Tharp takes a fresh approach in his new book as he delves into Hogarth's use of ceramics in his paintings and prints. The author also explores inversely the varied instances in which earthenware and porcelain make use of Hogarth designs.

Tharp's ceramic approach to the artist is not merely novel. He reveals how significantly Hogarth's art incorporates useful and sculptural ceramics. The objects play a sensual, tactile part in the composition. The artist included them to create tension by suggesting action- either potential or real- as they stand ready to fall or show the scars from previous breakage.

Hogarth's design of "A Midnight Modern Conversation" is illustrated on a stoneware jug. An earthenware sculpture depicts a Hudibrastic horse and rider; a Staffordshire creamware figure group of the Vicar and Moses impersonates the pulpit scene in "The Sleeping Congregation"; Hogarth's ubiquitous pug is modeled in Wedgwood black basalt. German ceramics borrowed Hogarth images for designs painted on Meissen in the 1740s and on nineteenth- century Berlin porcelain.

Tharp realized that it was natural to pair Hogarth and ceramics. It was during Hogarth's lifetime that porcelain was first made in England. Desire to make real porcelain had been a feverish goal since the East India Company introduced chinese porcelain to the English household. Consequently, Hogarth's favorite themes relating to the theatre and his close friends from the stage became ceramic images wrought from this newly discovered material, English soft-paste porcelain. There were the Chelsea porcelain models of his dog Trump and there were the Bow porcelain figure models of his old friends James Quin, David Garrick, plus the familiar street criers and the Thames Waterman. Hogarth was intimate with both the real and the ceramic representation.