Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress - 2 - Surrounded by artists and professors…
Feb 9th, 2009 by fine art dealer
Our hero has dressed the part of prodigal wastrel, sorry man of taste, now he heads straight for fashionable excess. He is surrounded by men desiring to clean out his wallet -a dancing master, fencing teachers, a celebrity gardener, a musician. These men were based on actual people of the day! Hogarth’s work was daring satire.
Rakewell has started giving ostentatious present – a gold snuffbox to a singer. He has taken up all the fashionable extravagances – the room’s decoration suggests he adores the strangely aristocratic/backyard sport of cockfighting.
Another figure is a poet who has written of our hero’s greatness – in return for cold hard cash.
Hogath is telling us that…like most of us, Rakewekk is a dupe. What horrors may befall him you have to wait and see!
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