We See a Ghost: Hogarth's Satire on Methodists and Connoisseurs

Abstract

“We See a Ghost” compares William Hogarth's print Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism (1762) with its rather different, unpublished first state, Enthusiasm Delineated (1761). The latter is revealed as a polemic on shopworn French academic art theory, including the systems proposed by Charles LeBrun and Roger de Piles, and on misplaced, even erotically passionate enthusiasm for the old masters. Fearing to cause a scandal with the blasphemous art lovers of the first state, Hogarth remade the print into a satire on Methodist fanaticism, the version that was published.