Lecture | Frédéric Ogée on Hogarth and the English Enlightenment
Presented by the Lewis Walpole Library:
Frédéric Ogée | Art and Truth: William Hogarth and the English Enlightenment
28th Lewis Walpole Library Lecture
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 12 February 2026
William Hogarth, Self-Portrait, ca. 1735, oil on canvas (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1981.25.360).
William Hogarth was a pioneering painter and engraver of 18th-century Britain and is often considered as one of the most important figures in the rise of an English school of art. His art engaged in an unprecedented manner with the ideas, debates, and values of the English Enlightenment, translating them into accessible visual narratives, encouraging the development of active critical thinking. As such his art reflected and nourished the English Enlightenment’s empiricist agenda—the idea that knowledge comes from observation and experience—to which he gave accessible visibility by bringing art into the realm of popular culture and public discourse, and putting the distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art under serious stress. His major contribution to the promotion of a ‘modern’ (and English) conception of art is the unflinching priority he always gave to truth over beauty in his representations, a feature, remarkably, that has remained characteristic of British art ever since.
Frédéric Ogée is Emeritus Professor of British Literature and Art History at Université Paris Cité and École du Louvre. His main period of research is the long eighteenth century, and his publications include two collections of essays on William Hogarth, as well as ‘Better in France?’ The Circulation of Ideas across the Channel in the Eighteenth Century (Lewisburg, 2005), Diderot and European Culture (Oxford, 2006; repr.2009), and J.M.W. Turner, Les paysages absolus (Paris, 2010). He also co-edited Jardins et civilisations (Valenciennes, 2019) following a conference at the European Institute for Gardens and Landscapes in Caen. In 2006–07, he curated the first-ever exhibition of Hogarth for the Louvre Museum. He is currently working on a series of four large monographs in French on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British artists. The first one, Thomas Lawrence: Le génie du portrait anglais was published in December 2022. The second one, on the landscape artist J.M.W. Turner, will be published early in 2026.
Thursday, 12 February 2026, 5.30pm
Yale University Art Gallery Auditorium
Exhibition | Gardens of Enlightenment, 1750–1800
Opening in May at Versailles:
Gardens of Enlightenment, 1750–1800 / Jardins des Lumières, 1750–1800
Grand Trianon and English Garden of the Petit Trianon, Château de Versailles, 5 May — 27 September 2026
Curated by Elisabeth Maisonnier
Louis Belanger, The Borders of the Bagatelle Pavilion, 1785, gouache on vellum (Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN).
In spring 2026, Gardens of Enlightenment (1750–1800) will open, bringing together nearly 150 works—paintings, drawings, furniture, architectural projects and costumes—to reveal the originality and diversity of landscaped gardens designed in the second half of the eighteenth century. Inspired by a model that emerged in Great Britain in the 1730s, this new style freed itself from the rules of the French formal garden, breaking with symmetry and geometric layouts in favour of irregularity, the picturesque, and a poetic evocation of nature. From the middle of the century onwards, this aesthetic spread across northern Europe in a wave of Anglomania that combined eccentric garden follies, philosophical reverie, a taste for exoticism and the search for an intimate refuge.
The exhibition explores its many sources—from Antiquity to China—as well as the new ways of life it accompanied, oscillating between rural pleasures, festivities, and contemplation. The exhibition route will engage in close dialogue with the historic gardens of the Trianon estate, offering a new perspective on the elements of its English garden: the Belvedere, the Temple of Love, and the Queen’s Hamlet.
Jardins des Lumières, 1750–1800 is curated by Elisabeth Maisonnier, Chief Curator of Heritage, Château de Versailles.
New Book | Portrait Miniatures
As noted by Adam Busiakiewicz, at Art History News; from Michael Imhof:
Bernd Pappe and Juliane Schmieglitz-Otten, eds., Portrait Miniatures: Artists, Functions, Manufacturing Aspects, and Collections (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2025), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-3731915096, €40.
Twenty-two renowned experts from nine countries present the miniature portrait from different perspectives, discussing the private use of miniatures, special depictions, and messages conveyed by miniatures. Significant but little-known museum collections are introduced alongside insightful information about the living conditions of the artists active at the time. Lastly, aspects regarding the production techniques for miniatures are examined.
This fourth volume publishes the presentations given at the 2024 conference held by the Tansey Miniatures Foundation. Interested individuals from all over the world come together in Celle every two to three years at these conventions on the portrait miniature to discuss this special genre of portrait painting.
The table of contents can be seen here»
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