The Company of Undertakers
after 1736
Medium
Engraving
Dimensions
sheet: 10 5/16 x 7 1/16 in. (26.2 x 18 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1932
Accession Number
32.35(256)
Tags
Art Historical Context
William Hogarth's *The Company of Undertakers*, an engraving created after 1736, exemplifies the artist's razor-sharp satire of 18th-century British society. Hogarth (1697–1764), a English painter and printmaker, was renowned for his moralistic series that exposed human folly, vice, and institutional corruption. This compact work (10 5/16 x 7 1/16 in.) features a group of men, likely portraying undertakers in a darkly humorous light, critiquing professions tied to death and misfortune amid the Enlightenment era's growing skepticism toward authority. As an engraving, the piece showcases Hogart...
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...