Exhibition | Satire, Sympathy, and Social Critique
Opening this fall at the Beinecke Library:
Satire, Sympathy, and Social Critique: William Hogarth’s Progress Prints
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, 12 October — 30 May 2027
William Hogarth, A Scene outside the Bell Inn, from A Harlot’s Progress, plate 1, 1732.
Drawing from the rich William Hogarth collections of Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library, Satire, Sympathy, and Social Critique investigates the power and reverberating impact of the artist’s acclaimed ‘moral progress’ prints. Hogarth’s contemporaries immediately recognized these works for their ability to both entertain and call out cruelty and injustice, and artists and publishers over the following centuries have engaged with Hogarth’s modern moral subjects through appropriation and parody. The exhibition features six of Hogarth’s ‘moral progresses’, which are simultaneously satirical and empathetic, as well as additional archival context on the artist’s commitment to social and political advocacy. Selected examples of responses and reuses of Hogarth’s prints, both written and visual, from the 18th to the 21st centuries demonstrate the continued and enduring relevance of these works.
Symposium | Hogarth: A Tribute to Ronald Paulson
From the Lewis Walpole Library:
Hogarth: His Art, Life, and Times — A Tribute to Ronald Paulson
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 14–16 October 2026
Organized by Cynthia Roman
Presented by the Lewis Walpole Library in collaboration with the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Library, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, this symposium celebrates the generous gift by Professor Paulson (1930–2024) of his papers together with a legacy endowment to establish a fellowship at the Lewis Walpole Library in memory of his son, Andrew Meredith Paulson.
Additional Programming
• Film screenings
• Study Room visits and gallery tours by advance sign-up
• Exhibition | Satire, Sympathy, and Social Critique: William Hogarth’s Progress Prints, on view at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (12 October 2026 — 30 May 2027)
Required registration can be completed here»
This program is made possible through the support of the Lewis Walpole Library and a generous gift of Richard Greenberg in memory of Ronald Paulson.
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William Hogarth, The Harlot Beats Hemp in Bridewell Prison, from A Harlot’s Progress, plate 4, 1732 (The Lewis Walpole Library, Gift of Richard Greenberg).
4.30 Welcome
4.45 Panel 1 | Paulson’s Hogarth
Moderator: Jill Campbell (Professor of English, Yale University)
• Zirwat Chowdhury (Assistant Professor of 18th- and 19th-Century European Art, UCLA) — Lessing’s Hogarth, Hogarth’s Paulson
• Douglas Fordham (Professor of Art History, University of Virginia) — Breaking and Remaking Hogarth’s Bristol Altarpiece
• Caroline Patey (Professore Ordinario di Letteratura Inglese, Università degli Studi, Milano) — William Hogarth, the Novel Maker
6.15 Breakout Session
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10.15 Panel 2 | Drawing
Moderator: Laurel Peterson (Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings, YCBA)
• Zoë Dostal (Visiting Assistant Professor of Art, Amherst College) — Life Models, Hemp Rope, and the Line of Beauty
• Stacey Sloboda (Paul H. Tucker Professor of Art History, University of Massachusetts, Boston) — Boys Peeping at Nature: Drawing and Modeling at the St. Martin’s Lane Academy
• Jennifer Tonkovich (Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator, Morgan Library) — The Mutable Page: Hogarth’s Drawings
2.00 Breakout Session
3.45 Breakout Session
5.00 Reception at Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library
Exhibition on view: Satire, Sympathy, and Social Critique: William Hogarth’s Progress Prints
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10.15 Panel 3 | Nation and Empire
Moderator: Tim Barringer (Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art, Yale University)
• Holly Shaffer (Associate Professor of Art and Architecture, Brown University) — The Two Tastes: Food and Art in Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty
• Pierre Von-Ow (Associate Lecturer in Early Modern Art History, University of St. Andrews) — A New British Order: Hogarth’s Design for a Domestic Column Capital
• Catherine Roach (Associate Professor of Art History, Virginia Commonwealth University) — ‘Purely English’: Hogarth, Nation, and Empire in the Early Nineteenth Century
12.00 Breakout Session
2.00 Panel 4 | Social and Political Critique
Moderator: Miya Tokumitsu (Donald T. Fallati and Ruth E. Pachman Curator of the Davison Art Collections)
• Meredith Gamer (Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University) — Hogarth’s Children
• Andrew Rudd (Director of Studies at Anglo Educational Services in London) — Hogarth, Walpole, and London’s Children’s Charities
• Phil Withington (Professor of Social and Cultural History, University of Sheffield) — Hogarth, Addiction, and Political Economy in Early Modern London
3.45 Breakout Session
Julia Carver on William Hogarth’s Altarpiece in Bristol
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From the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery:
Julia Carver | William Hogarth’s Bristol Altarpiece
St Nicholas Church, Bristol, 17 September and 19 November, 2pm each afternoon
William Hogarth’s largest known work resides inside St Nicholas Church in Bristol. Drop into St Nicholas Church to see the vast triptych that was painted for St Mary Redcliffe in 1755/56. On September 17 and November 19, Julia Carver, curator of art at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, will give an introduction to the painting and its remarkable journey around Bristol.
Depicting Christ’s Ascension on a central canvas flanked by The Sealing of the Sepulchre and The Three Marys at the Tomb, the triptych was commissioned as a new altarpiece for Bristol’s St Mary Redcliffe church. It was Hogarth’s only commission from the Church of England. He was paid £525, and the receipt still exists.
During the Victorian era Hogarth’s work was no longer thought to be suitable for St Mary Redcliffe, and attempts were made to sell it. Eventually, it was given to the Bristol Fine Art Academy, which became the Royal West of England Academy, in 1859. The work continued to present challenges for public display, not least due to its size. It was eventually rolled up and stored in the basement. Bristol Museum & Art Gallery officially acquired the triptych in 1955 from the Art Collections Fund, and it has been on display at St Nicholas Church since the 1970s.
Open afternoons in 2026
Thursday, 17 September, 2–3pm
Thursday, 19 November, 2–3pm
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