Cautionary Tales: the satirical engravings of William Hogarth

Renowned British artist William Hogarth (1697–1764) headed an English tradition of satire that flourished through the first half of the 18th century. He satirised the follies of his age in widely disseminated and popular engravings such as 'Gin Lane' and the series 'The Harlot's Progress' and 'Marriage à-la-mode'. Hogarth's prints are filled with scenes of drunken debauchery, infidelities, and wanton acts of crime and violence. Most of the action takes place on the streets of London, under the shadow of the Tyburn gallows.

This exhibition at the National Library Gallery brings together more than 50 of these witty, subversive and often riotously humorous prints, all drawn from the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library. It focuses on Hogarth's use of the print series, where a story or moral point extends through a number of images in a way that foreshadows the comic strip.

Hogarth's key themes and formats are brought up to date in the exhibition through the inclusion of work by contemporary New Zealand cartoonists.

David Low consciously worked in the tradition of Hogarth, even producing a modern version of 'A Rake's Progress'. Trace Hodgson's series of 'Underbelly' cartoons offer a local, contemporary take on Hogarth's satire of the streets. Hodgson's heavily tattooed, chain-smoking bogans and their vegan girlfriends replace Hogarth's cast of fashionable rakes and harlots.

Cautionary Tales is accompanied by three online exhibitions which present Hogarth's 'Marriage-à-la-mode series', a group of cartoons that examine New Zealanders' attitudes towards marriage over time, and a group of Trace Hodgson's 'The Underbelly' cartoons.

View Hogarth's Marriage-à-la-mode

View Marriage-à-la-New Zealand

View The Underbelly