Description:
Hand-colored print of "The Laughing Audience" (or "A Pleased Audience") by William Hogarth (1697-1764), which was first created in 1733 as a subscription ticket to Hogarth's large engraving, "Southwark Fair" (1733) and to his series, "A Rake's Progress" (1735). It was reissued by a number of English printers from the late 18th century well into the 19th century. "The Laughing Audience" is divided into three sections which depict three classes of people. The two fops in the top register, one of whom offers snuff to a lady and the another chats up an orange seller, are portrayed as both more refined and more distant from the dramatic experience as than the eleven member of the working class audience in the pit where tickets were cheapest, who seem to be enjoying the performance in an unselfconscious manner, with the exception of one man who may be a critic. The three figures in the foreground are the musicians. The two orange girls, the only 'industrious' characters portrayed in the print, are drawn with the serpentine "Line of Beauty." Round, pleasant faces with long foreheads and delicate noses such as theirs will later be used by Lavater as examples of simplicity, innocence, and moral beauty. The theatre, with its candle lighting, downstage-left door and pit rail, closely resembles the intimate Georgian Theatre Royal (built 1788) at Richmond, North Yorkshire.
Subjects:
Watercolor painting Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+57.266 |
