Hogarth’s morality masterpiece to return to its original home
For the first time in over 200 years, William Hogarth’s satirical masterpiece A Rake’s Progress will return to its former home in West London. The set of 8 paintings depicting a now notorious morality tale, will go on loan to Ealing’s Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery, the house where they were hung from 1802 to 1810 after being purchased by the wife of renowned architect Sir John Soane. The series will form the centerpiece of a new exhibition of work by contemporary artists focusing on aspects of everyday life in London.
Pitzhanger was the country home of Soane and his wife Eliza and was where they displayed their growing collection of art and antiquities. It reopened as a heritage site and art gallery last spring following a major £12-million conservation and restoration. The new exhibition — Hogarth: London Voices, London Lives, which opens in March — will present a modern reading of London, capturing multiple voices, places and issues that relate to the city. Photography, film, sound and performance will offer a snapshot of the people and places of the capital and its social challenges.
Since 1810, A Rake’s Progress has been displayed in Sir John Soane’s Museum in central London, which became a national museum after the architect’s death in 1837. It is one of the Museum’s star attractions and is displayed behind Soane’s innovative moving planes in the Picture Room, opened by Museum staff at select times. The series has only ever been loaned three times before, each time to exhibitions at Tate Britain: in 2007, 1987 and 1971.
Artists who will display work at Pitzhanger alongside Hogarth will include John Riddy, whose photographic series Low Relief reflects on the city’s built environment from housing estates to institutions such as the Bank of England and Faisal Abdu’Allah, who will create a live salon and barber’s shop as a meeting place for human interaction and community.
Clare Gough, Director of Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery said: “We are particularly proud to welcome back to Pitzhanger A Rake’s Progress, the great masterpiece that Soane hung on the walls here to inspire and entertain his guests. Hogarth’s series still has great resonance today and we wanted to build on its observations of society and culture to reflect on life in contemporary London today.”
A Rake’s Progress, painted in 1732–4, depicts the social conditions of London in narrating the decline and fall of a young man Tom Rakewell, who inherits a fortune and embarks on a profligate lifestyle in fashionable London before succumbing to financial ruin and madness. It is Hogarth’s most famous work. Sir John Soane’s Museum said that it “apposite that the series will be returning to Ealing”, as it comes hot-off-the-heels of their own well-received Hogarth exhibition Place and Progress, which closed at the start of the year. The loan has been supported by the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund. The Museum has said that they won’t be replacing the paintings with while they are in Pitzhanger, as it will allow the centuries-old picture planes to be rested.
Hogarth: London Voices, London Lives runs at Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery from 18 March to 19 July 2020 and is supported by an Arts Council National Lottery Grant.
