SOANE MUSEUM, Hogarth Conclusion

The sixth episode entitled The Gaming House shows an impressive gallery of faces and gestures emphasizing vice and corruption. The libertine is on his knees cursing his misfortune; his wig has fallen on the ground, revealing his completely bald head. To the right, an enormous lender prepares a note for a £ 500 loan. Almost nobody seems to notice the smoke filtering in from the back of the room, a hint of the fire that will soon destroy it all.

Now look at the seventh, dramatic painting entitled The Prison, where you learn that Tom was jailed for his gambling debt. The scene is quite dramatic: you can see Tom on the left with a terrified expression, while the old woman he had married screams in his ears; a child brought him a mug of beer and is claiming his payment while the jailer asks for a tip. From the various objects scattered around you can see that the libertine has unsuccessfully tried to make money with inventions, alchemy, or writing theatrical plays. To the right, Sarah is fainting at the sight of what her seducer of the past has come to. Of the people trying to hold her up you can see a lawyer and a child, who is the "daughter of sin" resulting from her relationship with Tom Rakewell.

Now move on to the eighth and last episode entitled The Madhouse. Tom rolls around on the ground, practically naked and in the middle of an enormous crisis in Bedlam's asylum for the poor. Two nurses tie his wrists and ankles, while Sarah, crying, helps hold him down. Two lovely ladies visit the asylum as a pastime: their smile is the most biting, cruel detail in the entire cycle. Around them, the daily life of the crazy is depicted with Hogarth's monstrous sense of comedy. You can see a trio on the left with a chubby man who thinks he is the pope, a possessed violinist, and a melancholy little boy, sick with love. In the center a crazy man is pretending to be a king, holding a scepter and wearing a paper crown, while a monkey-like tailor is wearing fabric samples and a dreary astronomer is looking through a cardboard telescope; in the cell behind Sarah you can see a man having a spiritual crisis. Just think, before Hogarth no painter had ever had the courage to depict the real interior of an asylum!

FUN FACT: Hogarth was definitely a forerunner: when he finished a work he would sell it by publishing an ad in the newspapers. If he was living today, he probably would have had a blog on the internet!