Members' Research Report Archive

This project considers the influence of William Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty (1753) on eighteenth-century scientific imaging. Though predominantly considered a work of aesthetics, The Analysis can be read as one of a series of texts that directed naturalists in recording the world, beginning with John Woodward’s seminal Brief Instructions on Making Observations (1696). Indeed, like other naturalists of his day, Hogarth deposited a copy of his publication with London’s Royal Society. By considering the treatise in this alternate light, the project highlights a mode of scientific imaging more dynamic and lively than the “plain” style generally attributed to eighteenth-century natural history.