William Hogarth

Saskatchewan NAC Auction House Biography and Notes

William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist. In his youth he took up an apprenticeship with an engraver, but did not complete the apprenticeship. Influenced by French and Italian painting and engraving, Hogarth's works are mostly satirical caricatures, sometimes bawdily sexual, mostly of the first rank of realistic portraiture. They became widely popular and mass-produced via prints in his lifetime, and he was by far the most significant English artist of his generation. Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, was a Scottish Jacobite known for his feuding and changes of allegiance. In 1715, he had been a supporter of the House of Hanover, but in 1745 he changed sides and supported the Stuart claim on the crown of the United Kingdom. Lovat was among the Highlanders defeated at the Battle of Culloden and convicted of treason against the Crown, following which he was sentenced to death and subsequently beheaded. After his arrest in 1746 Lovat was brought to London for trial. On the way he stopped briefly in St Albans, where William Hogarth arranged to meet him at the White Hart Inn and to interview and draw him. The result of the meeting was this famous print, published while Lovat was lodged in the Tower of London. On 9 April 1747 he became the last man in England to be beheaded.