Paper

2001.10

William A. McGill

Gift

Gift of William A. McGill

1733 - 1734

24 x 26

12 in

14-3/4 in

A Friend of the Galleries: Selections from the McGill Collection (2005)

Cultural/Historical Context

"A Harlot's Progress, Plate 1 William Hogarth, English, 1697-1764 Engraving Gift of Prof. William A. McGill, 2001.10.03.01 “Before the Bell Inn in Wood Street, Mary or Moll Hackabout, newly arrived in London, is caught between the aggressive agents of corruption, who are set against the crumbling tavern wall, and the ordinary (and passive) middle-class people arranged around the solidly built home. Dressed in modestly designed clothes and bearing the scissors and pin cushion of a dressmaker, she has just alighted from the York wagon. Though she appears as fresh and artless as the rose that covers her bosom, her expression suggests that she is a little flattered by the attention of the bawd. Above Moll, a housewife, surrounded by chamber pots and laundry, hangs out clothing. She seems to represent the secure if unexciting bourgeois life the girl leaves behind. With his back to her an affluent clergyman, perhaps Moll's father reads the address on a letter, probably a request to the Bishop of London for a sinecure (To the Right Reverend Father in London). Short-sighted and insensitive to the crises around him (including his own), like his horse, he is intent on fulfilling his personal ambitions and desires at the expense of his flock. A bawd feels Moll with her naked hand in the same clinical way animals are inspected before purchase. This figure is said to resemble Mother Needham, the keeper of a notorious brothel patronized by the aristocracy; she had recently been stoned to death by the London populace when she was pilloried for managing a disorderly house. This procuress seems to be the instrument of the nobleman who stands in the shadow of the door leering intensely at the girl, his right hand fumbling suspiciously in his pocket. A symbol of aristocratic corruption, he has come with his pimp to prey on indigent, naïve young girls who alight here from the country. The nobleman has been identified as Colonel Charteris, the worst of the exploitative privileged class to which he belonged. The coffin-like trunk with Moll's initials, the preoccupied clergyman (motifs which reappear in the final scenes) and the dead goose (For my Lofing Cosen in Tems Stret in London) give a funereal and ominous cast to the scene.” From Sean Shesgreen, Engravings by Hogarth "