William Hogarth Prints – (The Sleeping Congregation)
William Hogarth Prints – (The Sleeping Congregation). A congregation dozes during a church service as the clergyman reads from the gospel and his clerk. Sitting below the pulpit, eyes the exposed bosom of a young woman.
Hogarth intended the preacher to satirize his contemporary John Theophilus Desaguliers.
Originally published in October 1736. Hogarth here republished the print in 1762, adding elements such as two warts on the reader’s face and cracks in the wall on which the angel is painted.
William Hogarth
William Hogarth, (born November 10, 1697, London, England—died October 26, 1764, London). The first great English-born artist to attract admiration abroad, best known for his MORAL and satirical engravings and paintings—e.g., A Rake’s Progress (eight scenes,1733).
His attempts to build a reputation as a history painter and portraitist, however, met with financial disappointment. His aesthetic theories had more influence in Romantic literature than in painting.
