#59. William Hogarth’s ~ English Grand Tour

William Hogarth was deeply sceptical of the fashionable Grand Tour, where wealthy young Englishmen travelled through France and Italy to study classical art and culture. He believed that blindly imitating continental art could make British artists lose their own character and originality. Hogarth argued that England itself offered abundant material for an artist, its people, streets, theatres, taverns, landscapes and rapidly changing society. Rather than copying Raphael or the Italian Old Masters, he wanted artists to look directly at life around them. His own paintings and engravings became a celebration, and often a savage satire, of 18th-century English society, suggesting that an artist did not need to cross the Channel to find subjects worthy of great art.