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INTRODUCTION

William Hogarth's great moral series, A Rake's Progress, first published in print form in 1735, has become a defining work of 18th- century social satire. The eight scenes, full of vivid detail, humour and pathos, have intoxicated successive generations of artists and have proved irresistible to reinterpretation. Stuart Luke Gatherer's Rake is the latest in a long line of Hogarth-inspired cads, womanisers and bounders — this rogue’s gallery includes the work of George Cruikshank, William Powell Frith, Wilhelm von Kaulbach, David Low, Rex Whistler and David Hockney.

What is it about Hogarth's Rake that continues to capture the artistic imagination? The answer, I suspect, lies partly in the story, with its deep moral resonance, and partly in the way Hogarth tells it. The eight scenes chart the rise and fall of the young heir Tom Rakewell who chooses to affect the manners of an aristocratic gentleman. In doing so he abandons all financial, social and sexual restraint, eventually losing his liberty and reason. It is, in essence, an old story, rooted in the parable of the prodigal son, and employing the iconography of the Seven Deadly Sins.

However, standing before the original paintings in Hogarth's series (1732—3) which hang in the Picture Room at Sir John Soane's Museum in London, one is first struck, not by the narrative, but by the peculiar, unnerving reality of the scenes. Hogarth's characters are plucked straight from the streets and taverns of 18th-century London. And the streets and taverns are there too, together with the smell and noise. We see Tom, drunk, in the clamour of a Covent Garden brothel, the room permeated by the smell of candle-smoke and sweat, and later, his pathetic figure slumped in the foetid gloom of the Fleet Prison as a snub-nosed boy demands payment for beer. Of the eight scenes, only one takes place in the open air - Tom inhabits a closed, stifling world of shallow pleasure and cruel degradation. From the moment he embarks on his chosen course, he is never free.

It is this sense of claustrophobia and moral emptiness that Stuart Luke Gatherer captures so brilliantly in his take on Hogarth's series. Gatherer's Rake is a city trader and his windfall comes from the stock market (his eventual Bedlam), but like Tom Rakewell, wealth corrupts his moral sense and leaves him at the mercy of his own passions. Whilst Tom apes the young aristocrat, his modern compatriot pursues the life of a playboy (his friends happy to play the game until the inevitable point of self-destruction). Like Tom, Gatherer's protagonist is not cruel or vicious; he is the victim of his own passivity, coaxed and cajoled (as in the 'Orgy' scene) to enjoy the fruits of his wealth.

The same sense of disturbing reality that characterises Hogarth's Rake's Progress infuses Gatherer's series. The expressions and actions are skilfully and meticulously delineated, each scene resembling a snapshot from life. But there is something missing. Here Gatherer shows he has understood the true bleak power of Hogarth's work, by creating a satire on the absence of love.

William Palin Assistant Curator Sir John Soane's Museum