Currently not on view
The Young Heir Taking Possession,
1735
Published by William Hogarth, 1697–1764; born and died London, England
William Hogarth, best known for his sardonic prints of eighteenth-century London, can be credited with the invention of the British satirical print genre. The character of the “rake”—a wealthy, often aristocratic, male addicted to gambling, womanizing, and indecent behavior—was a popular stock role in English Restoration comedies of the seventeenth century. By Hogarth’s time, the term had taken on a moralizing tone, representing a life of total ethical depravity that often ended in debtor’s prison or insanity. In this series of eight engravings with narrative texts—four of which are exhibited here—Hogarth traced the decline and fall of the fictional Tom Rakewell, a wealthy young man who had moved to London following the death of his miserly father, only to squander his inheritance on luxurious living, gambling, and prostitution.
Plate 1: Having received his inheritance, Tom is outfitted with a wardrobe suitable to his newfound fortune, while paying off his former fiancée Sarah Young, pregnant with his child, to free himself of his obligation to her.
Information
1735
Europe, England, London
- John Trusler, The Works of William Hogarth (London: Jones, 1833)., pp. 105–114 (illus.)
- Ronald Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)., no. 122
- Ronald Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works (London: The Print Room, 1989)., no. 122
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1988," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 48, no. 1 (1989): p. 35-59., p. 39
