DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2057#0056
HOGARTH. 37
of back-ground and drapery painters; it
was not sufficiently profitable to pay the
expences my family required. I therefore
turned my thoughts to a still more novel
mode, viz. painting and engraving modern
moral subjects, a field not broken up in any
country or any age.
" The reasons which induced me to adopt
this mode of designing were, that I thought
both writers and painters had, in the his-
torical style, totally overlooked that inter-
mediate species of subject, which may be
placed between the sublime and grotesque;
I therefore wished to compose pictures on
canvas, similar to representations on the
stage; and farther hope, that they will be
tried by the same test, and criticised by
the same criterion. Let it be observed,
that I mean to speak only of those scenes
where the human species are actors, and
these I think have not often been deli-
neated in a way of which they are worthy
and capable.
" In these compositions, those subjects
of back-ground and drapery painters; it
was not sufficiently profitable to pay the
expences my family required. I therefore
turned my thoughts to a still more novel
mode, viz. painting and engraving modern
moral subjects, a field not broken up in any
country or any age.
" The reasons which induced me to adopt
this mode of designing were, that I thought
both writers and painters had, in the his-
torical style, totally overlooked that inter-
mediate species of subject, which may be
placed between the sublime and grotesque;
I therefore wished to compose pictures on
canvas, similar to representations on the
stage; and farther hope, that they will be
tried by the same test, and criticised by
the same criterion. Let it be observed,
that I mean to speak only of those scenes
where the human species are actors, and
these I think have not often been deli-
neated in a way of which they are worthy
and capable.
" In these compositions, those subjects