WILLIAM HOGARTH AND HIS PUG DOG

Hogarth statue to be provided with canine companion

William Hogarth, one of the great painters of the 18th century, will be commemorated in a fine statue by Jim Mathieson later this year.
The local fund-raising committee, operating under the wing of the Chiswick Traders' Association, is proud to announce that it has now reached its original target sum of £50,000. The statue will be un-veiled in Chiswick High Road in the autumn, a short walk from the artist's summer home, which is now a museum in his memory.

The committee is planning to add the figure of a dog alongside the statue of the artist. As Hogarth included a pug called Trump alongside him in one of his self-portraits, we feel sure that he would always have been seen around Chiswick with a pug at his heels. His contemporaries saw this as part of Hogarth's sense of humour; an admirer even wrote a pamphlet of conversations with the pug:

"I may appear nothing more then you would call a Pug, yet within this canine form an heavenly emanation dwells, the genius that inspired Hogarth in all his performances".

So now there will be one final fund-raising effort, to provide the extra £10,000 that is needed to commission and cast this additional piece of the sculpture. The first donations for the pug are already coming in and anyone wishing to add their own gift towards the cost should make their cheque out to the "CTA Hogarth Millennium Fund" and send it to the Chiswick Traders' Association, 8 Heathfield Gardens London W4 4JY.

Hogarth may have lived three centuries ago, but his interests lay in matters which strike many chords with people today.

• Animals appear in many of his works - a pet monkey, a dog stealing food, pigs scampering away from a crowd - but his series of prints, Four Stages of Cruelty, against the horrors of London crime, show his abhorrence of their ill-treatment.
  
  
• His fondness for children is clear in his paintings, such as those of the Ranby children, who lived near him in Chiswick. And he was an energetic supporter of the Foundling Hospital, fostering some of its children each summer at his Chiswick house.
  
  
• His was sympathetic to the ordinary people of London, includ-ing the many black people who were his contemporaries, and portrays them with affection, both in conversation pieces and amongst the crowds on the street.
  
  
• He hated injustice and the corruption of his time, showing it in some of his work, such as his series of pictures of an election. He was also outraged that others produced pirated versions of his prints without any return for himself, campaigning successfully in 1735 for the first ever Act of Parliament which protected artists' intellectual property rights.

The dog will serve to symbolise his humanity.

If you want to pledge some money then contact hugh@chiswicktraders.fsnet.co.uk

or send a cheque to: Chiswick Traders' Association c/o 8 Heathfield Gardens W4 4JY. Make your cheque payable to "Chiswick Traders Association Millennium Fund"

LINKS

Hogarth's Birthday party

The Story of the Campaign

The Rake's Progress