Forthcoming: ‘Hogarth’s Hidden Parts’
Out this month, as noted at the publisher’s website:
Bernd W. Krysmanski, Hogarth’s Hidden Parts: Satiric Allusion, Erotic Wit, Blasphemous Bawdiness and Dark Humour in Eighteenth-Century English Art (Hildesheim, Zürich and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2010), ISBN: 9783487144719, EUR 48.
If you think of William Hogarth as a moralist who gave charitable support to foundlings and provided ethical guidance through his pictorial satires, then it is high time you changed your mind. This challenging, thoroughly researched and thought-provoking book reveals many new findings on Hogarth, showing us a different, hidden and immoral English artist: a carouser, a debauchee, and a spiteful joker who mercilessly attacked his contemporaries. Although a pictorial satirist and a successful print-dealer, Hogarth nevertheless wallowed in obscene amusement, frequented prostitutes, possibly had paedophilic tendencies, and seemingly died from the lingering effects of syphilis. Hogarth the popular painter and engraver is shown here as a dark humorist who dealt primarily in sexual double entendre and produced blasphemous motifs that satirically lambasted “high” religious art and debunked the eighteenth-century taste for Old Master work. This book ought to change the way we think about Hogarth.
Enfilade 
I have received my copy of Bernd Krysmanski’s book and I am delighted. As a scholarly work on Hogarth the book is physically easy to handle and easy on the eye: typeface, point size, paper quality and so on. It is a reader’s book. The illustrations, determined by the book’s format, in some cases could have been bigger however this minor distraction is no barrier to understanding. The structure to Krysmanski’s argument is well laid out in the contents and is spread throughout the text in bold print, which together with the on-page footnoting, make it easy to delve into to access some point or other or to check on the fully cited sources: this latter a powerful feature of the book. In this sense it is an easy read but it is not a tabloid romp of titillation as the title and some chapter headings might at first suggest: it is a closely argued and sustained thesis that requires thoughtfulness, even so there is much to tickle one’s fancy.
In the writing of this book Krysmanki’s aim is set out on page 10: ‘… I want to provide future scholars with a most extensive and precise critical apparatus on the subject [namely the hidden aspects of Hogarth’s personality and work, the other Hogarth as it were], which may give new impulses to further research in this broad, but nevertheless intriguing, and highly entertaining field.’ In this he may, in the fullness of time, be proved successful though there is a lot here that some might take issue with, nevertheless one cannot deny the author’s marshalling of evidence in support of his arguments.
There is internal evidence to show that the book has been reworked right up to the point of publication by the citing of sources of the same year but more impressive than this is his citation from sources that are contemporaneous with the prints themselves and to the points being made. For example in footnote 60, in discussing the twin prints of Gin Lane and Beer Street (2.1.3. The Campaign against Alcoholism), he cites Stephen Hales’ essay of 1754, warning of the dangers of consuming gin, and Martin Grindal’s, 1741, warm endorsement of beer as a health drink. Further, for the Anglo centric reader, Krysmanski provides some excellent insights into German scholarship, In this regard I am for one humbled and welcome this central European perspective on Hogarth.
For those who are open to having their preconceptions challenged I thoroughly recommend this book: it is a well paced, carefully written, judiciously illustrated and slow burning page turner: a book for savouring the carnal delights of human frailty.
This book has recently been nominated for the prestigious “William M B Berger Prize for British Art History”, which is awarded annually to a scholarly publication that demonstrates outstanding achievement in the field of British Art History.
Thanks for the news! As I recall, the winner is announced in July. I’m curious now about the other nominees. Does anyone have a complete list? -CH.
Here are the other nominees:
Adrian Clark, British and Irish Art 1945-1951. From War to Festival
2010 Hogarth Arts/Paul Holberton
ISBN 978 0 95554063 4 8, £30, pp272, 24 bw
David Nolan and Carolyn Starren, On Public View – A Journey around the Sculptures in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
NOTE published online. Please visit
http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/onpublicview
Chapters download as pdfs with a video introduction to watch on the site
Celina Fox, The Arts of Industry In the Age of Enlightenment
[2009] 18 February 2010, YUP
ISBN 978 0 300 16042 0, £50, pp576, 200 bw, 60 col
Cherry Ann Knott, George Vernon 1636-1702 ‘Who built this House’. Sudbury Hall Derbyshire
1 June 2010 Tun House Publishing
ISBN 978 0 9565240 0 3, £75 (signed limited edition of 500), pp782, illus bw & col
Katharine Baetjer, British Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1575-1875
30 March 2010 Metropolitan Museum/YUP
ISBN 978 1 58839 348 7 (Met Mus)
ISBN 978 0 300 15509 9 (YUP)
£55, pp308, 215 bw, 140 col
Kevin Sharpe, Image Wars: Promoting Kings & Commonwealth in England
4 May 2010 YUP
ISBN 9780300162004, £35, pp512, 90 bw
John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery. Later Stuart Portraits 1685-1714
8 February 2010 National Portrait Gallery
ISBN 978-185514 410 1, £125, pp460, 358 bw, 305 col
John McAleer, Representing Africa. Landscape, exploration and empire in southern Africa, 1780-1870
1 March 2010 Manchester University Press
ISBN 978 0 7190 8104 0, £60pp, 241, 16 bw, 9 col
Cassandra Albinson, Peter Funnell & Lucy Peltz, eds, Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power and Brilliance
Exh cat. 21 October 10 YUP
ISBN 978 0 300 16718 4, £40, pp280, 20 bw, 160 col
Cecilia Powell & Stephen Hebron, Savage Grandeur & Noblest Thoughts. Discovering the Lake District 1750-1820
Exh cat. 2010 Wordsworth Trust
ISBN 978 1 905256 42 6, £19.95, many illus in colour
Mary Bryan H Curd, Flemish & Dutch Artists in Early Modern England. Collaboration and Competition, 1460-1680
1 May 2010 Ashgate Publishing
ISBN 9780754667124, £65, pp236, ills bw
Barbara Bryant, GF Watts In Kensington. Little Holland House and Gallery
[2009] March 2010 Watts Gallery
ISBN 9780956102232, £10, pp92, 81 bw
Mireille Galinou, Cottages & Villas: The Birth of the Garden Suburb
19 October 2010 YUP
ISBN 978 0 300 16726 9, £40, pp480, 55 bw, col 250
Christiana Payne, John Brett, Pre-Raphaelite Landscape Painter
14 May 2010 YUP
ISBN 9780300165753, £40, pp256, 150 bw, 120 col
Charlotte Yeldham, Maria Spilsbury (1776-1820), Artist and Evangelical
1 February 2010 Ashgate
ISBN 978 0 7546 6991 3, £65, pp230, 73 bw,
Mark Bills, Watts Chapel: A Gude to the Symbols of Mary Watts’s Art and Crafts Masterpiece
1 July 2010 Philip Wilson
ISBN 978 0 85667 692 5, £18.99, pp80, 187 bw/col
Bernd W Krysmanski, Hogarth’s Hidden Parts
Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim
ISBN 978-3-487-14471-9, Euros 48, pp514, 304 bw
Elisabeth Soulier Detis, Guess at the Rest. Cracking the Hogarth Code
27 May 2010 James Clarke & Co Ltd
ISBN 139780718892159, £35, 183 bw, pp233
Douglas Fordham, British Art and the Seven Years’ War. Allegiance and Autonomy
2010 University of Pennysylvannia Press
ISBN 9780812242430, £42.50, pp334, 87 bw
Tim Barringer, Before and After Modernism, Byam Shaw, Rex Vicat Cole, Yinka Shonibare, MBE
Exh cat. November 2010 Central St Martin’s
ISBN 978 0 946282 00 5, £15pp,132, 151 bw/col
Jason Kelly, The Society of Dilettanti: Archaeology and Identity in the British Enlightenment
[2009] 28 January 2010 YUP
ISBN 978 0 300 15219 7, £40, pp366, 100 bw, 20 col
Julian Mitchell, The Wye Tour and its Artists
Exh cat. 2010 Logaston Press
ISBN 978 1906663 32 2, £12.95, pp168, illus bw & col
Max Browne, Theodor von Holst. His art and the Pre-Raphaelites
Exh cat. 2010 Holst Birthplace Museum, Cheltenham
ISBN 13 978 0 9563769 0 9, pp64, illus colour & bw
Leonée Ormond, Linley Sambourne: Illustrator and Punch Cartoonist
2010 Paul Holberton
ISBN 978-1907372032, £30, pp312, 120 bw
Jennifer Scott, The Royal Portrait. Image and Impact
2010 Royal Collection Enterprises
ISBN 978 1 905686 13 1, £19.95, pp200, 157 col
Philip Brookman, Eadweard Muybridge
Exh cat. 2010 Tate Publishing
ISBN 9781854378378, £29.99, illus bw & col
Charlotte Gere & Judy Rudoe, British Museum – Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria
1 April 2010 British Museum Press
ISBN 978-0714128191, £50, pp552, 100 bw, 400 col
David Fraser Jenkins
Paul Nash. The Elements
Exh cat. February 2010 Dulwich Picture Gallery (Scala)
ISBN 978 1 85759 619 9 £25, illus in colour
Jessica Feather, British Watercolour & Drawings. Lord Leverhulme’s Collection in the Lady Lever Art Gallery
1 October 2010 Liverpool University Press
ISBN 978-1846311550 £35, pp400, 370 bw/col
Mary Bennett, Ford Madox Brown: A Catalogue Raisonné
10 September 10 YUP
ISBN 978-0300165913, £125, 2 vols, pp686, 522 bw, 458 col
Ilaria Bignamini and Clare Hornsby, Digging and Dealing in Eighteenth-century Rome
25 February 2010 YUP
ISBN 978-0300160437, £45, 2 vols, pp630, 200 bw, 50 col
Robert Hewison, Ruskin on Venice
14 January 2010 YUP
ISBN 978-0300121780, £45, pp500, 105 bw, 25 col
Malcolm Jones, The Print in Early Modern England: An Historical Oversight
8 June 2010 YUP for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
ISBN 978 0300136975, £45, pp352, 270 bw, 20 col
Richard Ormond & Elain Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: Figures & Landscapes 1883-1899
The Complete Paintings Vol 5
7 September 2010 YUP
ISBN 978-0300161113, £50, pp392, B&W 127 bw, 311 col
Grace Brockington, Above the Battlefield: Modernism and the Peace Movement in Britain
1 October 2010 YUP
ISBN 9780300151954, £35, pp244, 100 bw, 40 col
Morna O’Neill, Walter Crane: The Arts & Crafts, Paintings & Politics 1875-1890
30 November 2010 YUP
ISBN 978-0300167689, £35, pp320, 100 bw, 20 col
Tara Hamling, Decorating the Godly Household. Religious Art in Post-Reformation Britain
25 November 2010 YUP for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art
ISBN 978-0300162820, £45, pp256, 80 bw, 40 col
Anthony Vidler, James Frazer Stirling: Notes from the Archive
15 October 2010 YUP
ISBN 978-0300167238, £35, pp300, 330 col
Many thanks for the full list — lots of terrific titles and many from HECAA members! -CH