Hudibras and the Lawyer, plate twelve from Hudibras
February 1725/26
Medium
Etching and engraving in black on cream paper edge, mounted on cream wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 24.5 × 34.4 cm (9 11/16 × 13 9/16 in.); Plate: 27 × 35.3 cm (10 11/16 × 13 15/16 in.); Primary support: 27.2 × 35.6 cm (10 3/4 × 14 1/16 in.); Secondary support: 36.8 × 47.6 cm (14 1/2 × 18 3/4 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
184617
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
William Hogarth here depicted Hudibras’s visit to a lawyer who encourages the knight to write a letter to the woman he is courting. Just as Hudibras is a play on the popular figure of the “heroic knight,” Samuel Butler used his past experience in law to satirize the lawyer. Hogarth translated Butler’s humorous critique into the engraving by showing a robed and wigged lawyer sitting in his office like a king on his throne. Hogarth’s engravings of Butler’s satirical epic summarize the social and p...
About the Artist
William Hogarth · 1697–1764
William Hogarth (1697-1764) was an English painter, printmaker, and pictorial satirist who became the first great English-born artist to attract admiration abroad. Born into poverty in London, the son of a failed schoolmaster who was imprisoned for debt, Hogarth's early experiences with the harsh realities of 18th-century urban life profoundly shaped his artistic vision. After apprenticing with si...