Picture
The surviving painting and original (first state) print shows four judges sitting below the King's Arms, in session in the Court of Common Pleas. Hogarth ridicules the lack of ability or interest among the judiciary, whose "shallow discernment, natural disposition, or wilful inattention, is here perfectly described in their faces". None of the four judges is concerned with the case before them: one is busy other business; one is examining a former deposition or some material unconnected to the case before him; and the final two are lost on various stages of sleep. The four judges have been identified as the Honourable William Noel; Sir John Willes, the Chief Justice, the heavyset judge in the centre (with pince-nez in the engraving); Henry, later Earl Bathurst, and later still Lord Chancellor; and Sir Edward Clive, who is dozing on Bathurst's shoulder. Willes was known as a hanging judge - he had refused mercy for Bosavern Penlez in the cause célèbre of 1749, but was equally famed as a rake, and he is the main target for Hogarth's satire here. Hogarth's representation of Willes has been suggested as the inspiration for the character of Mr. Justice Harbottle in Sheridan Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly (1872). The motto of the Order of the Garter "Honi soit qui mal y pense" below the King's Arms has been deliberately cut off in Hogarth's composition leaving only the evil thoughts of "Mal y pense" floating above the judges' heads. Paulson says that the painting's power derives from the juxtaposition of the frailty - both bodily and moral - of the judges themselves with the authority indued by the robes of state, and compares it to both Hogarth's second portrait of Bishop Benjamin Hoadly and his print of Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn, both of which contrast the human condition of the subjects with the grandeur of their dress. Hogarth designed and engraved the plates himself from his original painting. The first state print, which was issued on 4 September 1758, was intended to show the four judges as a demonstration of character portraiture. It is headed "Character" and subtitled "Of the different meanings of the words Character, Caricatura, and Outre, in Painting and Drawing".
Minor variations on the first state exist with different wording in the titles and inscription. The second state, the only known variation in the composition of the picture itself, is incomplete. The King's Arms have been removed and replaced by eight heads, in two subject groups, one showing character portrait and the other caricatures of the same figures. According to the addition made to the inscription plate by John Ireland, Hogarth started the alterations during October 1764, and was still working on them up to his death on 26 October 1764. Bathurst's appears again among these heads: his character portrait is reproduced to the far right in the character group, and a caricature appears in the same position in the caricature group. The other three figures in the two groups show two men looking eagerly at third, in poses reminiscent of the Cartoons of Raphael that Hogarth had used in Character and Caricatura.
Read more about this topic: The Bench (Hogarth)
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“The explanation of the propensity of the English people to portrait painting is to be found in their relish for a Fact. Let a man do the grandest things, fight the greatest battles, or be distinguished by the most brilliant personal heroism, yet the English people would prefer his portrait to a painting of the great deed. The likeness they can judge of; his existence is a Fact. But the truth of the picture of his deeds they cannot judge of, for they have no imagination.”
—Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846)
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