Four Times of The Day - Background

Background

Four Times of the Day was the first set of prints that Hogarth published after his two great successes, A Harlot's Progress (1732) and A Rake's Progress (1735). It was among the first of his prints to be published after the Engraving Copyright Act 1734 (which Hogarth had helped push through Parliament); A Rake's Progress had taken early advantage of the protection afforded by the new law. Unlike Harlot and Rake, the four prints in Times of the Day do not form a consecutive narrative, and none of the characters appears in more than one scene. Hogarth conceived of the series as "representing in a humorous manner, morning, noon, evening and night".

Hogarth took his inspiration for the series from the classical satires of Horace and Juvenal, via their Augustan counterparts, particularly John Gay's "Trivia" and Jonathan Swift's "A Description of a City Shower" and "A Description of the Morning". He took his artistic models from other series of the "Times of Day", "The Seasons" and "Ages of Man", such as those by Nicolas Poussin and Nicholas Lancret, and from pastoral scenes, but executed them with a twist by transferring them to the city. He also drew on the Flemish "Times of Day" style known as points du jour, in which the gods floated above pastoral scenes of idealised shepherds and shepherdesses, but in Hogarth's works the gods were recast as his central characters: the churchgoing lady, a frosty Aurora in Morning; the pie-girl, a pretty London Venus in Noon; the pregnant woman, a sweaty Diana in Evening; and the freemason, a drunken Pluto in Night.

Hogarth designed the series for an original commission by Jonathan Tyers in 1736 in which he requested a number of paintings to decorate supper boxes at Vauxhall Gardens. Hogarth is believed to have suggested to Tyers that the supper boxes at Gardens be decorated with paintings as part of their refurbishment; among the works featured when the renovation was completed was Hogarth's picture of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The originals of Four Times of the Day were sold to other collectors, but the scenes were reproduced at Vauxhall by Francis Hayman, and two of them, Evening and Night, hung at the pleasure gardens until at least 1782.

The engravings are mirror images of the paintings (since the engraved plates are copied from the paintings the image is reversed when printed), which leads to problems ascertaining the times shown on the clocks in some of the scenes. The images are sometimes seen as parodies of middle class life in London at the time, but the moral judgements are not as harsh as in some of Hogarth's other works and the lower classes do not escape ridicule either. Often the theme is one of over-orderliness versus chaos. The four plates depict four times of day, but they also move through the seasons: Morning is set in winter, Noon in spring, and Evening in summer. However, Night—sometimes misidentified as being in September—takes place on Oak Apple Day in May rather than in the autumn.

Evening was engraved by Bernard Baron, a French engraver who was living in London, and, although the designs are Hogarth's it is not known whether he engraved any of the four plates himself. The prints, along with a fifth picture, Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn from 1738, were sold by subscription for one guinea (£157.00 in 2013), half payable on ordering and half on delivery. After subscription the price rose to five shillings per print (£37.00 in 2013), making the five print set four shillings dearer overall. Although Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn was not directly connected to the other prints, it seems that Hogarth always envisaged selling the five prints together, adding the Strolling Actresses as a complementary theme just as he had added Southwark Fair to the subscription for The Rake's Progress. Whereas the characters in Four Times play their roles without being conscious of acting, the company of Strolling Actresses are fully aware of the differences between the reality of their lives and the roles they are set to play. Representations of Aurora and Diana also appear in both.

Hogarth advertised the prints for sale in May 1737, again in January 1738, and finally announced the plates were ready on 26 April 1738. The paintings were sold individually at an auction on 25 January 1745, along with the original paintings for A Harlot's Progress, A Rake's Progress and Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn. Sir William Heathcote purchased Morning and Night for 20 guineas and £20 6s respectively (£ 3,100 and £ 3,000 in 2013), and the Duke of Ancaster bought Noon for £38 17s (£ 5,700 in 2013)) and Evening for £39 18s (£ 5,900 in 2013). A further preliminary sketch for Morning with some differences to the final painting was sold in a later auction for £21 (£ 3,100 in 2013).