Tate Britain’s exhibition of Hogarth’s paintings and prints (February 7 to April 29 2007) gives us a vivid depiction of the society in which Wesley, Whitefield and the 18th century evangelists ministered.
This was a period when the church was in a weakened state, still suffering from the silencing of many good ministers following the Great Ejection of 1662.
Hogarth’s images still have the power to shock. In choosing the streets of London as his subject matter, he broke through the 18th-century conventions where art was commissioned by (and thus required to flatter) a wealthy land-owning aristocracy. Instead, like a journalist, he reveals a cross-section of society teeming with pickpockets, gamblers, rakes and petty criminals; where the national addiction to gin was a major cause of poverty, sickness and neglect.
