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About two dozen men and women, almost all with pale skin, gather in a room with high, stone walls, with bars over the windows and iron manacles and chains hanging from the wall to our right in this horizontal painting. Most of the people are men, and many wear knee-length, long sleeved jackets, breeches, and stockings, and some wear white wigs. Three men and two women create a loose line across the stone floor, close to us. Near the center, a man stands wearing a coral-red coat with gold-colored buttons, navy-blue breeches, white stockings, buckled, black shoes, and a black tricorn hat. He faces us with his arms crossed over his chest and his feet planted widely apart. His ankles are manacled, and iron bars reach along his legs. To our left, a woman wearing a long, aquamarine-blue dress with a full, wide, hoop skirt kneels with arms spread wide, a handkerchief in one hand, in front of an older, portly man. He leans away from her with one hand raised, and skeleton keys hang from that wrist. To our right, a woman wearing a full, white, satin dress kneels facing us and looks up at a man wearing a black coat and hat, with white at the neck and cuffs, and white stockings. A sword hangs at his side. He holds up one hand, palm out, toward the woman in white. Both women wear pearl necklaces and white lace caps. The remaining people gather around the perimeter of the scene behind a low, brick-red wall. The head and shoulders of a boy with brown skin peeks out of the box near the man with the sword, to our right. The scene is surrounded by a band of gold and by a cobalt-blue, gold-edged curtain that flutters along the top and drapes down each side to puddle on the floor in the bottom corners.

William Hogarth

A Scene from The Beggar's Opera, 1728/1729

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 51.1 x 61.2 cm (20 1/8 x 24 1/8 in.)

framed: 79.2 x 88.6 x 6.9 cm (31 3/16 x 34 7/8 x 2 11/16 in.)

Credit Line

Paul Mellon Collection

Accession Number

1983.1.42

Artists / Makers

William Hogarth (artist) English, 1697 - 1764

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Overview

Hogarth represents an important watershed in British art, marking the end of the century-long predominance of Dutch and Flemish painters in England and the beginning of a native school. Although his style was influenced by French rococo artists, Hogarth was a realist and social critic whose subjects came from the London middle classes as he observed them in the streets, in coffee houses, or at the theater.

This vivid scene is a small version of Hogarth's earliest dated painting, now in the Tate Gallery, London. The subject was based on John Gay's popular and long-playing ballad-opera. With its open buffooning of Italian grand opera and its more subtle attacks on the British ruling class and Walpole government, the story was a ready medium for Hogarth's incisive pictorial satire.

The setting (act 3, scene II) is in Newgate prison where Macheath, a highwayman and anti-hero of sorts, has been brought after his arrest for robbery. He stands in the middle of the stage, shackled, legs astride, a dominant figure in brilliant red. To the left is Lucy, Macheath's lover, the daughter of the jailer Lockit. To the right is Macheath's wife, Polly, who kneels by her father, Peachum, the fence who betrayed Macheath and in doing so brought about the present crisis. Both wife and lover plead for Macheath's life to be spared.

More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries, which is available as a free PDF https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/british-paintings-16th-19th-centuries.pdf

Provenance

Edward Cheney.[1] (Possibly--although, if so, inaccurately described as a "Garden Scene with many figures, in colours"--sale, Sotheby's, 29 April 1885 et seq., 3rd day, no. 332); bought by (P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London). Francis Capel Cure [1854-1933], Badger Hall, Essex, by 1905; by descent to his nephew, Nigel Capel Cure [b.1908], Blake Hall, Ongar, Essex, by 1965.[2] (John Baskett, Ltd., London); purchased June 1975 by Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1983 to NGA.

[1] According to Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis and Philip Hofer, "The Beggar's Opera" by Hogarth and Blake, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, New Haven, and London, 1965), under no. 5. According to The Provenance Index, J. Paul Getty Trust, Santa Monica, California, Edward Cheney [1803-1884] is listed as the inheritor of the Badger Hall estate from his brother, R. Henry Cheney [d. 1866], and as the uncle of Col. Alfred Capel Cure. Alfred inherited Badger Hall from Cheney; the house then passed by descent to Alfred's nephew, Francis Capel Cure. The Getty lists its sources as "P[rovenance] I[ndex]: Collector's File" and Burke's Landed Gentry [edited by Sir Bernard Burke; the (London) 1898 ed. includes Captain Edward Cheney et al.].

[2] Lewis and Hofer 1965 (as per n. 1 above) list the six different versions of the composition, of which one then belonged to Nigel Capel Cure.

Associated Names

Baskett, Ltd., John
Cheney, Edward
Colnaghi & Co., Ltd., P. & D.
Cure, Francis Capel
Cure, George Nigel Capel
Mellon, Paul
Sotheby's, London

Exhibition History

1912: Works by the Old Masters, and by Deceased Masters of the British School. Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1912, no. 150.

1971: Hogarth, Tate Gallery, London, 1971-1972, no. 46, repro.

1986: Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1986, unnumbered checklist, repro. (detail)

1997: "Among the Whores and Thieves": William Hogarth and 'The Beggar's Opera', Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1997, no. 10, fig. 4.

Technical Summary

The fine canvas is tightly plain woven; it has been lined, but the original tacking margins survive intact. The ground is warm gray and of moderate thickness. There is a thinly applied yellowish green imprimatura. The painting is executed in thin, rich, opaque layers that have an enamellike quality; the figures in the background are sketchily painted. There are pentimenti in the curtain: x-radiographs reveal that Hogarth originally painted upper center a satyr's head set between swags of drapery - which, as in the Yale version of this subject, would probably have borne the motto of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theater: VELUTI IN SPECULUM UTILE DULCI- suspended on either side of what was presumably, although partially beneath the satyr's head, the royal coat of arms. The highlights of the curtain are executed with what appears to be gold foil toned with glazes. The edging of Macheath's pink coat was originally gilded. The paint surface is slightly abraded and has been slightly flattened during lining. The painting is otherwise in good condition. There are scattered retouches applied to abraded surfaces and some of the cracks. The thin natural resin varnish has not discolored.

Bibliography

1965: Lewis, Wilmarth Sheldon, and Philip Hofer. "The Beggar's Opera" by Hogarth and Blake. Cambridge, Massachusetts, New Haven, and London, 1965: no. 5, pl. 5.

1971: Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times. 2 vols. New Haven and London, 1971: 185, pl. 63.

1978: Webster, Mary. Hogarth. London, 1978: no. 6, repro., 13-14.

1981: Bindman, David. Hogarth. London, 1981: 32-36.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 352, no. 491, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 204, repro.

1988: Einberg, Elizabeth and Judy Egerton. The Age of Hogarth. London (Tate Gallery Collections, vol. 2), 1988: 76, fig. 29.

1992: Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 122-128, color repro. 125.

1992: National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 142, repro.