With his varied series of satirical prints, William Hogarth (1600-1764) created a broad public patronage for a new kind of art that appealed to the values of a progressive urban middle class. These works, which Hogarth termed his “modern moral subjects,” were series of narrative compositions designed for reproduction through engravings. A Rake’s Progress (1725) describes the dismal fate of Thomas Rakewell, a wealthy young man who squanders his inheritance and eventually winds up in a lunatic asylum. Drawn from the collection of the Bell Gallery.

image: A Rake's Progress, plate 3, 1735