1758
oil
canvas
From the collection of Fitzwilliam Museum
The Bench is a 1758 oil by William Hogarth, a Rococo painting work, held at Fitzwilliam Museum.
This painting depicts a group of four men, all dressed in 18th-century attire, with three of them wearing wigs. The man on the right is holding a book and appears to be reading from it, while the other three men are looking at him with interest. The scene is set against a dark background, which helps to focus attention on the figures. The painting is done in oil paint, and the artist has used a range of colors to create a sense of depth and texture. The brushstrokes are visible, giving the painting a sense of energy and movement. If you're interested in learning more about this style of painting, you might want to look into the technique of chiaroscuro.
The Bench is the title of both a 1758 oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Hogarth, and a print issued by him in the same year. Unlike many of Hogarth's engravings produced from painted originals, the print differs considerably from the painting. It was intended as a demonstration of the differences between character painting, caricature and outré—developing on the theme he had begun to address in Characters and Caricaturas (his subscription ticket for Marriage à-la-mode)—but Hogarth was unhappy with the result as it showed only "characters", and he continued to work on the…
Source: wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Hogarth had often been accused of being a caricaturist, but regarded this as a slur on his work. In his book on art, The Analysis of Beauty, Hogarth claimed that the critics had branded all his women as harlots and all his men as caricatures. He complained: …the whole nest of Phizmongers were upon my back every one of whome has his friends and were all taught to run em down. He had made an early attempt to address what he perceived as a mistake on the part of his critics with the subscription ticket for his 1743 series Marriage à-la-mode, on which he contrasted a number of his reproductions…
Source: wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The surviving painting and original (first state) print shows four judges sitting below the King's Arms, in session in the Court of Common Pleas. Hogarth ridicules the lack of ability or interest among the judiciary, whose "shallow discernment, natural disposition, or wilful inattention, is here perfectly described in their faces". None of the four judges is concerned with the case before them: one is busy other business; one is examining a former deposition or some material unconnected to the case before him; and the final two are lost on various stages of sleep. The four judges have been…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Source: wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
William Hogarth (; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraver, satirist, cartoonist and writer.
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