William Hogarth - The Four Times of Day

The Four Times of Day, William Hogarth, 1736 

William Hogarth was an English painter during the classical period and is one of the most influential English artists and entrepreneur of his time. Hogarth was known for his fine art as well as his prints. Within the beginnings of the industrial revolution, there was a growth of the middle class. There was a shift of change with the aristocracy losing power and the merchant class gaining power. This growth of the middle class and change in power affected art influences. William Hogarth's work depicts this shift, and his art seems to focus on popular culture and the social problems of the time. With Hogarth’s art speaking to a larger audience, prints made his art available to more people. This was because the prints were less expensive than paintings. William Hogarth would also paint paintings in pictorial series, telling a story; it was the comics of that century and spoke to his wider range and diverse buyers. One of William Hogarth’s pictorial series is The Four Times of Day. The series of painting shows his views of contemporary life, mocking it.

 

The first of the pictorial series is The Four Times of Day: Morning painting. In the background of Hogarth's painting, you see the city's crowded streets; this scene is in the square of Covent Garden with St. Paul's church visible on the right side. In this painting, he shows the divide between rich and poor. The proper woman holds a fan to her mouth in disapproval as she passes the young promiscuous couple. While there is no attention paid to the paupers trying to keep warm by the fire and begging for charity, they are ignored by the wealthy. This painting hints at the social issues of Hogarth's time. Hogarth's use of lighting, composition, and colors portrays the division between the two classes of rich and poor. Even though the poor are by fire, they are still shadowed, showing them being overlooked by the wealthy, who spend their time judging each other, heavily drinking, and participating in prostitution.

 

The second of the pictorial series is The Four Times of Day: Noon painting. This of a crowded alley in the city. This shows the tension between the slovenly crowd and the wanton crowd. On the Solvenly side, there is a pie shop the middle class is highlighted, and on the other is the elegant French protestant leaving the church. Again, Hogarth uses light, and color to show the divide between classes, dividing the rich from the poor. There is also a poor child on the lower right of the picture scrounging for food on the floor. This second picture also portrays the lued behavior of the wealthy.

 

The third of the pictorial series is The Four Times of Day: Evening painting. The focus of this painting is the family: the husband and his wife, who is pregnant. There is a cow behind the couple, and the husband stands perfectly in front, where it looks as if he has cow horns. That would have represented that the husband was a cuckold, meaning a man whose wife in sexually unfaithful. Hogarth, in this painting, seems to be mocking the idea of the loving and peaceful family in his time; perhaps there was a considerable amount of adultery going on. 

 

 

The fourth of the pictorial series is The Four Times of Day: Night painting. This picture depicts the madness that fills the streets during the night. 

 

 

All four of the painting do a fantastic job portraying the troubled times and divide between the wealthy and poor. The greedy, alcoholic, prurient community of the English society. Hogarth does a beautiful job with the amount of detail in each of the four paintings, having the main characters highlighted, telling a story in each one. He also does a brilliant job portraying the time of day precisely in each painting; He uses light and the sky in the background with the detailing of the clouds. I appreciate these paintings because it is a true sense of history; it looks at what society was like back then. These paintings let you see the world from a different view, a flash into the world Hogarth lived. I enjoy art like this. I think being able to see the problems in your society, acknowledging them, and learning about them. That is the first step to improving them. Hogarth did prints of the paintings too, in 1738 they were reproduced and published as a series of engravings. His message about the social problems of his time was spread to a wide range of people, well, the middle class.

The Four Times of Day, print versions 

Sources 

Mataev, Olga. “William Hogarth Biography.” William Hogarth Biography - Complete | Olga's Gallery,https://www.freeart.com/gallery/h/hogarth/hogarthbio.html.



“The Four Times of Day by William Hogarth.” The Common, 7 Aug. 2017, https://www.thecommononline.org/the-four-times-of-day-by-william-hogarth/.

 

Mataev, Olga. “William Hogarth Biography.” William Hogarth Biography - Complete | Olga's Gallery, https://www.freeart.com/gallery/h/hogarth/hogarthbio.html.