William Hogarth valuation
A Harlot's Progress, Gin Lane and Marriage A-la-Mode: the London satirist whose prints sold in their thousands.
William Hogarth (1697–1764) was born in London and apprenticed to a silver engraver before he became a painter.
What a work by William Hogarth is worth
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Bio
William Hogarth (1697–1764) was born in London and apprenticed to a silver engraver before he became a painter. In 1732 he published A Harlot's Progress, six engravings after his own paintings that told a moral story in pictures, and their success, and the pirated copies that followed, led to the Engraving Copyright Act of 1735, known as Hogarth's Act. A Rake's Progress followed, its paintings now in Sir John Soane's Museum, then Marriage A-la-Mode, now in the National Gallery, and Gin Lane and Beer Street in 1751. He was also a portrait painter, a governor of the Foundling Hospital, and the author of The Analysis of Beauty, of 1753, which made a serpentine line of beauty the basis of good design.
Paintings by Hogarth are rare; his prints are not. He sold impressions from his own plates throughout his life and his widow went on printing them; the publisher John Boydell bought the plates and reissued them in 1790; and they were reworked by James Heath for a new edition in 1822, with later printings after that. A great many Hogarth prints on the market come from these later editions, and value depends on telling them apart: the state of the plate, the paper and watermark, the sharpness of the impression, and lettering that was added or changed. Lifetime impressions in good condition, and early states of the famous plates, are the most sought after.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
