Page History

Christina Chaplin

As a painter and engraver, William Hogarth made his living as an artist producing works highly valued by his audience.  Commissioned in 1732 to paint A Scene from the "Indian Emperor", a children's play, he began a series of commissions from various royal and aristocratic sources.  Being then rejected from portraying the royal wedding including a fat princess and deformed prince, he returned to his forte, the satiric series or image collected by the wealthy and admired/desired by the common folk as well. 

With his work of intrigue he was able to draw upon a large span of audience and the popularity of his works continued to grow.  Yet as an engraver, he only produced so many copies at subscription, charging a premium price.  (We can ignore here that he would produce more series after the subscriptions were filled for a higher price to increase his own profits.)  Many of the lower classes also wanted his works, because they were universally intriguing, but could not afford a guinea to buy one.  So the printsellers of the times monopolized on this demand by hiring other lesser artists to copy the works and sell them at an extreme discount.  Like teenage girls who cannot afford Chanel and go to Chinatown instead, these customers were of the opinion that an imitation was just as good as an original.  Unfortunately, enough people were of this same opinion that sales of original artworks suffered. 

Further, being that the copies were done by lesser artists, the imitations were often not of an excellent quality and could thus by comparison hurt the repute of the original artist.  Hogarth was angered by this practice both because he was losing valuable income to printseller shops piggy backing on his own success, and because his ego was damaged by the low quality of the prints that people were buying because they  believed them to be "just as good".  He petitioned parliament for an act to protect the rights of artists, designers, painters, and engravers to their intellectual property.  By law, this act would prevent forgeries or copies of the whole or parts of works done by artists. 

The Hogarth Act was a formal decree from Parliament that took its impetus from the idea that an artist is able to "own" his work because it is an expression, and thus an extension, of the self.  To Hogarth, it seemed as if the exclusive right to his work was a mandatory condition to be able to control how the work was seen and what kind of response it elicited from the audience (it's "meaning").  Seen in the many contexts layed out by printsellers, the meaning of Hogarth's work was potentially being shifted without his approval: a crime he thought noteworthy and disreputable.

 A quarter century earlier, a literary copyright law had been passed, giving sole right of intellectual property to authors.  Why should the same rules of ownership not apply to the visual arts as well?  Hogarth explained that by selling copies, the printshops were effectively stifling the levels of creativity and artistic endeavor taking place in the city.  Artists who could not make a living selling their own works could simply copy the works of another for a small sum, and were therefore not creating new and innovative arts.  He argued that if a copyright law should be passed, then artists would not have to compete with their own forgeries, which would lower their prices and make the higher arts available to a wider audience.  Also, given that the arts could then supply an artist with an honest living, more and more people would be inclined to try their hand at the arts, increasing the skill and range of English artists (a good incentive for a governmental body concerned with the reputation of its country, as artistic production is often used as a scale for societal sophistication).

 After Parliament approved the law and set a date for its activation, Hogarth postponed the release of his latest series of prints, The Rake's Progress.  Unfortunately, the shopkeepers were eager to produce one last round of copies before the law went into action.  Copies were then made by hearsay and remembrances of his paintings on display at his home.  It seems as if this occasion struck a chord with Hogarth because afterwards he decided to produce and release copies of his own, for a fragment of the cost, through an approved printshop.  He hoped to thwart the efforts of the criminal parties, but it also seems as if he realized the high demand for his work among populations who could not afford originals. 

A common analogy can be seen here with the rise and fall of the internet site Napster a few years ago.  Though copyrights have been in place for all intellectual properties for many years, there is still a demand in the public for cheap imitations where we deem the originals too expensive.  In the music industry, the internet has allowed for many sites to emerge which stream music live, or which allow the user to download as he pleases from a bounty of choices.  Napster was allowing such downloading, the transfer of music MP3 files from one user to another in free market.  Unfortunately, this kind of site was taking revenue away from music artists whose album sales were decreasing and thus discouraging the production of new music.  Many artists and recording companies felt that incomes were being snatched away from them by this process.  In an industry where one feels as if they will be cheated of their rightful profits, it is difficult to lure new artists and have innovation or renown.  In this case, as in the Hogarth Act, the government intervened and deemed the actions of the site illegal.  Yet in today's society, this kind of piracy is still prevalent.  If the copies are good enough, we often do not care if they are not originals or legally procured.  So in this specific industry, "touring" has become a larger part of revenue streams as CD sales dwindle in many areas.  Touring, the live performance of such music, is harder if not impossible to successfully imitate.

McKenzie Sullivan

The artist William Hogarth (1697-1764), was at the heart of London's eighteenth-century public life, and had intense opinions about it, which were expressed not only in his images but also in his legal lobbying.

According to the account on the experiences Hogarth's life, he very commercial in his approach to the sale of his prints, advertising them in the London papers and always looking for ways to maximize his returns. An essential part of securing these returns was the introduction of a copyright bill, which Hogarth devised in association with other young artists in 1735. At the time, piracy was rampant. Mass reproduction of an artist's original etchings, engravings and prints were cheap and profitable. Print sellers dominated the art market, as there were few other outlets for artists to sell their work. Print sellers began to mass-produce reproductions of the original work. Hogarth experienced personal loss from these factors, which led him to become one of the most vocal proponents for the inauguration of copyright laws for artworks.

In Hogarth's early work he was keen to idealize the social variety and exuberance that he saw as the best signs of British liberty; and he fought hard against the establishment of the Royal Academy of Art which would represent a state take-over of the existing public academies run by the artists themselves. Though he eventually secured a court position and painted official pictures of royal events, Hogarth remained always confident in the expression of his middle-class self. This is evident in his painting of Captain Thomas Coram (1740) who was a self-made sailor, entrepreneur and philanthropist who Hogarth depicted endearingly uncomfortable in the aristocratic settings of the painting thus poking fun at the upper class.

Hogarth was also passionately concerned with improvement of the poor. His works brought public attention to the plight of the poor in London. Two of Hogarth's most famous works, "Beer Street" and "Gin Lane", depict the satire of London life seen in Beer Street (wealthy young men drunken and pawing prostitutes), which is made to seem positively healthy and desirable in the light of the scourge of gin. These were years of turmoil in London, with large-scale immigration, mass poverty, high rates of violent crime, and, like many others of his day, Hogarth wondered how this underclass could become domesticated and made to serve the righteous interests of the nation.

The legal basis to Hogarth's success was the Copyright Act of 1735. Hogarth's mission was to defend the rights and property of British artists. He had decided to petition Parliament for an Act that would give designers and engravers the same statutory copyright that authors had won in 1709. Hogarth proposed a Bill that would give them an exclusive right to their work for fourteen years from the time of publication. This would not only mean that they retained the financial rewards now scammed by the print sellers, but it would also establish a different meaning of ownership of works of art; the engraver could legally 'own' the property produced by his labor. This meant that fine prints could retain their integrity and no longer be cheapened by poor copies.

Hogarth put forward his argument in an open letter to a Member of Parliament. He blamed print sellers, who capitalized on the labor of the poor engravers, working day and night at miserable prices. Hogarth was not thinking merely of himself but of the problems facing all engravers; the poorer workers who had no shop or studio to show their prints and had to be reliant on the unjust print sellers.

Hogarth's open letter made a case for the importance of copyright as a general good, not just an individual benefit. He argued that good-quality prints would raise the artists' reputations, and higher standards of reproduction. Hogarth also argued that copyright would improve the status of British art in general as more people would enter the engraving trade knowing they could profit from their art. This would create a large surge of artwork flooding into the market, providing a greater amount of work for the public to purchase and choose from. A booming art market would even benefit print sellers.

Although 'Hogarth's Act' did prove to have certain weaknesses, he not only stopped piracies but also improved British engraving. The final variation of the Act extended a copyright to fourteen years and charged a fine for every copied product that was discovered. The act had lasting repercussions throughout the art market and helped legitimize art as a product that was of economic value and was the private property of its creator.

 Links to Hogarth's Work:

"Captain Thomas Coram" (1740) <http://join2day.com/abc/H/hogarth/hogarth47.JPG^{Image Removed}>

"Beer Street" and "Gin Lane" (both 1751) <http://www.michaelfinney.co.uk/uploads/images/catalogue/1415_BeerStreet%26GinLane000001_1000.jpg^{Image Removed}>