[Reader-list] William Hogarth and the emergence of English copyright

[Rana Dasgupta]

(The following notes based on Jenny Uglow's biography of Hogarth (Faber 
& Faber, 1997.)

The artist William Hogarth (1697-1764), like a number of the men around 
him - such as actor David Garrick, and authors Samuel Johnson and Henry 
Fielding - was at the heart of London's eighteenth-century public life, 
and had intense opinions about it, which were expressed not only in his 
images but in his membership of charities and associations and in his 
legal lobbying.  This is a sketch of Hogarth's ideas on society and the 
public, in particular with respect to copyright, which was key to them.

Hogarth's family was educated but intensely poor.  His father's various 
attempts to make money out of schooling and educational pamphlets 
failed, and he found himself imprisoned for many years for debt.  He 
died broken and almost pathologically obsessed with his inability to 
publish his dictionary; the young Hogarth carried with him an enduring 
hatred of all the monopolists who were able to cheat or sideline 
small-time producers like his father.

William secured a silver engraving apprenticeship through his family and 
began to engrave plates and tankards etc.  He soon moved, however, into 
the engraving of book illustrations, shop advertisements, and social 
caricatures.  He was supremely talented at this latter form, producing 
overflowing scenes of London life whose dense meaning is difficult to 
read for our generation used to visual meaning unfolding in time.

In a startlingly ambitious expansion of his talents, he taught himself 
to paint and made his name with a series of six paintings, still famous 
today, The Harlot's Progress, which showed an innocent country woman 
arriving in London and descending into prostitution, prison and death.

http://www.haleysteele.com/hogarth/plates/harlot.html

The form was one of his own invention: the "Progress," a series of 
linked pictures that drew out a social stereotype (the harlot) into a 
tragic biography of naivety and need surrounded by indifference and evil 
interests.  It was a form he would repeat with such series as The Rake's 
Progress -

http://www.haleysteele.com/hogarth/plates/rake.html

- and Marriage a la Mode -

http://www.haleysteele.com/hogarth/plates/marriage.html

In each of these cases, Hogarth painted a set of unique, original 
paintings from which he then engraved a plate that could be used to 
produce an unlimited number of prints.  His revenue came mainly from the 
prints, that were sold to the public in large numbers.  He was 
unshamedly commercial in his approach to the sale of these prints, 
advertising them in the London papers and devising all kinds of schemes 
to maximise his returns.  An essential part of securing these returns 
was the introduction of a copyright bill which Hogarth devised in 
association with other young artists in 1735 (when he was 37 years old). 
   At the end of these notes comes Jenny Uglow's narrative of the 
formulation and introduction of this bill.

This bill needs to be understood in the context of a number of 
significant social and intellectual trends of the time (which are 
perhaps all the more significant when we reflect that Hogarth died only 
just before the constitutional formulations of "America").  Hogarth was 
ambitious and money-minded, and was sickened with jealousy for those who 
made more money than he; but this ambition could never eclipse his 
suspicion and contempt for the injustices and absurdities of establishd 
interests (and his satire of the classical, "Palladian" forms that were 
their aesthetic), nor take away from him his genuine identification with 
the poor.  He was an enthusiastic participant in the london tavern and 
coffee house scene, and instigator of a rowdy dining society (the 
Sublime Society of Beefsteaks); such institutions were the "Chat Rooms" 
and "Blogs" of the day - as Addison's new bourgeois journal The 
Spectator commented in 1711,

"Sometimes I am seen thrusting my Head into a Round of Politicians at 
Will's, and listening with great Attention to the Narratives that are 
made in those little Circular Audiences.  Sometimes I smoak a pipe at 
Child's; and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Post-Man, 
overhear the Conversation of every Table in the Room."

Hogarth shared in a faith widespread in his entrepreneurial, 
middle-class world in the power of trade and conversation.  Almost 
neurotically patriotic, his early work, in particular, is keen to 
idealise the social variety and exuberance that he saw as the best signs 
of British liberty; and he fought hard (and unsuccessfully) against the 
establishment of the Royal Academy of Art which would represent a state 
take-over of the existing public academies run by the artists 
themselves.  Though he eventually secured a court position and painted 
official pictures of royal events, Hogarth remained always confident - 
and sometimes brash - in the expression of his middle-class self, and 
his most striking portrait was of a self-made sailor, entrepreneur and 
philanthropist who is depicted endearingly uncomfortable in the 
aristocratic settings of the portrait:

http://www.abcgallery.com/H/hogarth/hogarth47.html

The other aspect of Hogarth's faith in unfettered British trade and 
conversation concerned improvement and the poor.  Not only did his works 
bring public attention to the plight of the poor in London, but he was 
involved in the setting up of a hospital for foundlings, where mothers 
could take babies they could no longer support.  As Hogarth became 
older, it is this aspect of his personality that comes to dominate, and 
his former love of writhing disorder gives way to a greater horror of 
indiscipline.  This can be seen in the facile moralising of his 
"Industry and Idleness" -

http://www.haleysteele.com/hogarth/plates/iandi.html

- and of course in two others of his most famous works, Beer Street and 
Gin Lane -

http://www.haleysteele.com/hogarth/plates/beer_and_gin.html

- where the standard satire of London life seen in Beer Street (wealthy 
young men drunken and pawing prostitutes) is made to seem positively 
healthy and desirable in the light of the scourge of gin.  These were 
years of turmoil in London, with large-scale immigration, mass poverty, 
high rates of violent crime, and, like many others of his day, Hogarth 
wondered how this underclass could become domesticated and made to serve 
the righteous interests of the nation.  The founding of the Foundling 
Hospital, after all, was not only a charitable gesture; the argument 
made to its rich patrons was that foundlings were a waste of British 
stock that could be used on the ships and in the fields and thus to 
boost the strength of a nation whose population was in disastrous 
decline compared to its European rivals.

This, then, is the background to a certain successful, self-confident 
man in the middle of eighteenth-century London.  The legal basis to this 
success and confidence was the Copyright Act of 1735.  Jenny Uglow's 
account can be found on pages 268-271, and appears below.

*******

Hogarth's mission to defend the rights and property of British artists 
carried over into his work as an engraver. The prints of A Rake's 
Progress had not been issued to subscribers with Southwark Fair that 
January for two reasons. First, Hogarth had been working on his 
pictures, adding new characters thrown up by the news. Second, he had 
plans to beat the printsellers and the pirates
and did not want to release the prints too soon. He had decided to 
petition Parliament for an Act that would give designers and engravers 
the same statutory copyright that authors had won in 1709. Working out 
the details with his friends, Hogarth proposed a Bill that would give 
them an exclusive right to their work for fourteen years from the time 
of publication. This would not only mean that they retained the 
financial rewards now creamed off by the printsellers, but it would also 
establish a different meaning of 'ownership' of works of art: at last, 
the engraver could legally 'own' the property produced by his labour. 
Furthermore, it enhanced the dignity of the work itself, giving the 
multiple print a similar status to that of the single painting. And it 
meant that fine prints could retain their integrity and no longer be 
debased, 'cheapened' by poor copies.

Hogarth put forward his argument in an open letter to a Member of 
Parliament. He could never write a dry document, and the little pamphlet 
storms off the page. He blasts at the printsellers, who have fattened on 
the labour of the poor engravers, working day and night at 'miserable 
prices'. The tyrants he fights are not rich patrons, or rich artists, 
but the 'overgrown shopkeepers' who band together in a vicious monopoly: 
if a printmaker dares ask a reasonable price, the printseller 
immediately has copies made and sold dirt cheap, to squash his 
rebellion. Hogarth was not thinking merely of himself but of the 
problems facing all engravers: the poorer workers who have no shop or 
studio to show their prints and have to be reliant on the printsellers; 
and those who are successful but are forced to use their time to act as 
shopkeepers (if they don't want to be at the mercy of the publishers), 
rather than work on their art. Many of these complaints were echoed by 
Vertue in his later note lamenting that engraving was the least 
profitable of all arts. This was partly, he thought, because of the mass 
production, 'the necessity of such works being inted on paper. a sheet 
being of small value - subject to be multiplyed. and consequently more 
in number so each of less value'. Prints were also often 'marr'd or ill 
printed' by ignorant workmen. But the worst feature was the way 'the 
print sellers squeeze and screw. trick and abuse the reputations of such 
engravers - to raise their own fortune by devouring that of the 
Sculpture-Engravers'.

Hogarth's open letter, The Case of Designers, Engravers, Etchers etc., 
made a case for the importance of copyright as a general good, not just 
an individual benefit. Good-quality prints would raise the artists' 
reputations, and higher standards of reproduction, he argued, would 
improve the status of British art in general. Secure in the knowledge 
that they would reap and keep the rewards of their work, more people 
would enter the engraving trade; the public would have a wider choice 
and - in the end - even the printseller would profit.

At the end of 1734 the engravers' petition was drawn up. William 
Huggins, as a lawyer, tried (not wholly successfully) to ensure that the 
legal technicalities were correct and in the following February it was 
presented to Parliament. It bears the signatures of engravers whom 
Hogarth had known, worked with and drunk with since the 1720S: George 
LaIllbert, anxious to protect the new engravings of his East India 
scenes; Gerard Vandergucht, who had engraved many of Hogarth's book 
designs; John Pine, whose work had brought a new vigour into the British 
trade; the architect and engraver Isaac Ware; George Vertue, and Joseph 
Goupy, now drawing teacher to Frederick, Prince of Wales.

In 1735, under a combination of commercial pressure and Hogarth's 
urging, old rivals were acting as one. Other engravers came forward to 
give their evidence to the Commons Committee, and the Bill went smoothly 
through the Commons and Lords. Finally a date was set for the Act to 
receive the Royal Assent: 25 June 1735. The assent was given, with nice 
irony, in a flourish of legal French. At the end of April, as soon as 
the Bill had the essential approval of the Lords, Hogarth rushed his 
advertisements for A Rake's Prog;ress into the press. On 3, 5 and 7 May, 
he announced in the Daily Advertiser that the prints would be delayed 
until 25June 'in order to secure his Property' by the new Act, which 
would prevent prints

'being copied without Consent of the proprietor, and therby preventing a 
scandalous and unjust Custom (hitherto practised with Impunity) of 
making and vending base Copies of original Prints, to the manifest 
Injury of the Author and the great Discouragement of the Arts of 
Painting and Engraving'.

He could not win, of course. Such a blazon of defiance roused the 
printsellers into action. Quickly, they sent scouts round to Hogarth's 
studio to spy out the paintings of the Rake. They then rushed back to 
put as much as they remembered on paper. Working from their sketches and 
muddled descriptions, hired engravers created a sub-Rake before 
Hogarth's true one appeared.  Major printsellers (Henry Overton, the 
Bowles brothers and John King) placed their own notices in the Daily 
Advertiser - for 'The Adventures of Ramble Gripe, Esq, Son and Heir of 
Sir Positive Gripe'. As well as making Hogarth quickly change his hero's 
name from Gripe to Rakewell, the printsellers' actions made him lash 
out. On the day of their advertisement he appealed vehemently for 
support against men 'who are capable of a Practice so repugnant to 
Honesty and destructive of Property'. All prints that appeared before 
24June, he added, would be 'an Imposition on the Publick'.  In mid-June, 
he announced that to protect that public he would have authorized copies 
made, to be sold at 2s 6d a set through Thomas Bakewell in Fleet Street. 
Eventually, the subscribers' prints were issued on 25June, followed by 
new impressions, sold at 2 guineas a set by Hogarth and Bakewell, and 
finally by Bakewell's cheap, smaller copies in mid-August.

So 'Hogarth's Act' did not solve all his problems, And when it was 
finally tested in court in 1753, it proved to have certain weaknesses 
due to technical problems with the drafting with regard to assignees: it 
was typical ofHogartb, who liked to do everything himself, not to think 
of the problems that might arise if someone else was doing the engraving 
for you.28 Nor did his Act protect those who copied old-master drawings 
or engravings. Nevertheless, he could write defiantly in his 
autobiographical notes that it had not only scotched piracies but 
improved British engraving,

'there being more business of that kind done in this Town than in Paris 
or any where else and as well. Such inovations in these arts gave great 
offence to dealers both in pictures and Prints.'

The printsellers' habit of living off the ingenuity of the industrious 
had suffered, and 'if the detecting the Rogurys of these opressers of 
the rising artists and imposers on the public is a crime I confess 
myself most guilty'.  The significance of the Act had, perhaps, been 
greater than even he realized.  The idea of the original, unique canvas 
as containing all worth was diluted; mass production was not seen as a 
slippage, a stigma, but as another legitimate route for an artist to take.

Hogarth was no maverick, thinking up this campaign in an isolated moment 
of genius. Similar arguments about intellectual and artistic property 
were going on in several fields in the 1730s. Musicians were worried 
about pirated scores and plagiarized performances; writers were seeking 
to extend the copyright through the 'Society for the Encouragement of 
Learning'; playwrights and theatre managers were arguing against 
censorship. The theatre, too, faced problems of internal politics and 
external pressures, of a slightly different nature. While Hogarth was 
galvanizing the engravers into concerted action, Fielding was also 
forging a new platform, forming his own company, 'The Great Mogul's 
Company of English Comedians' (adding ironically, 'Newly Imported'). In 
February 1735, with James Ralph as partner and a group of young actors, 
he took over the Litde Theatre in the Haymarket and launched a volley of 
irregular plays, beginning with Pasquin, a staggeringly successful 
political farce. Fielding, too, was challenging the Establishment; and 
the playwrights also laid claim to free expression and the ownership of 
their talent. When Walpole eventually introduced a Bill to license 
theatrical performances, Lord Chesterfield declared that the Bill

'is not only an encroachment on liberty, but is likewise an encroachment 
on property. Wit, my lords, is a sort of property: the property of those 
who have it, and too often the only property they have to depend on. It 
is indeed a precarious dependence.'