Hogarth and Europe at Tate Britain: far from anyone’s idea of a ‘little Englander’

Painter conjured up the ‘drunken lads’, beer and roast beef of Old England – but he was no insular jingoist

Marriage A-la-Mode – The Tête à Tête (c.1743)
Marriage A-la-Mode – The Tête à Tête (c.1743): Hogarth’s boisterous satire
(Image credit: The National Gallery)

William Hogarth (1697- 1764) is considered a “founding father” of a particularly British type of art, said Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian. The purveyor of broad, boisterous satires such as A Rake’s Progress (1732-34) and Marriage A-la-Mode (c.1743), Hogarth conjured up the “drunken lads”, beer and roast beef of Old England. Yet as this new exhibition at Tate Britain makes clear, he was no insular jingoist.

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