The Harlot's Progress and the Tradition of History Painting

Abstract

IN HIS PREFACE to Joseph Andrews (1742) Fielding associated himself as author of epic in prose with Hogarth as history painter. He was employing familiar analogy between the epic and history painting, the most exalted genres of poetry and respectively, and he alluded to Hogarth's prints to suggest how Joseph Andrews related to the literary tradition. A great deal has been written about the comic epic in prose, but very little about the comic history painting. Hogarth used the term history painting himself. Beginning to put his thoughts on paper in the 1750's and 1760's, he frequently called attention to the uniqueness of the form he had invented (this uncommon way of Painting, a Field unbroke up in any Country or any age) and to its combination of comic and moral qualities and its use of contemporaneity (modern moral Subjects).' His nearest approach to Fielding's term was in references to his new genre as occupying an area between the accepted categories of and grotesque. He commented sadly that painters and writers never mention, in the historical way of any intermediate species of subjects for between the and the grotesque, whereas he believed that the subject[s] of most consequence are those that most entertain and Improve the mind and are of public utility, and that true comedy is more economical and difficult genre than sublime history painting.2