The analysis of beauty : written with a view of fixing the fluctuating ideas of taste
1753
Dimensions
xxii, [2], 153, [5] pages, 2 folded leaves of plates : illustrations ; Height: 10 1/4 in. (26 cm)
Department
The Libraries
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Watson Library copy: Gift of Mary C. Schlosser
Accession Number
N70 .H7 1753
Art Historical Context
Step into the world of 18th-century aesthetics with William Hogarth's *The Analysis of Beauty: Written a View of Fixing theuating Ideas of Taste* (1753), a treatise housed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Watson Library. This elegantly bound volume, measuring 10¼ inches tall and spanning xxii, [2], 153, [5] pages with two folded leaves of illustrative plates, represents Hogarth's bold effort to codify beauty amid the era's shifting artistic standards. As a pioneering English painter, engraver, and satirist with Enlightenment rationalism, Hogarth challenged prevailing tastes by proposing a v...
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...