William Hogarth's Depictions of the Licentious Lifestyles

During the beginning of the Restoration period, King Charles' infidelities seemed to condone promiscuous behavior amongst the people of the era. The freshness and excitement of this newfound sexual freedom seemed to excite a rebirth of promiscuity, but the snowball effect had to slow down at some point. Seen through the work of William Hogarth, the tendency for rake-like behavior lost its momentum at the end of the Restoration period. Of course the frequency of infidelitous acts did not come to a halt at the beginning of the 18th century, or any other century thereafter, but it did take a different course. 

Hogarth, along with many others, began to see the destructive behavior and the harsh demise suffered by the scandalous rake. Despite their ability to brag of numerous evenings of unadulterated love-making, the rake's existence was a sad and lonely one, although never admitted by the obliviously satisfied playboy.

Hogarth's life had begun in a simple fashion and within that simple life he was able to make great accomplishments in several fields. Hogarth can be attributed to having the first ideas of copyrighting and in addition to his innovative thoughts on publishing rights, he was an avid painter and print-maker. Son to a scholar, Hogarth said that he always had his wits about him, and he always had his eye on the goings-on. 

Hogarth's medium of choice was the copper plate, as opposed to the pen and paper; his stories were told in etchings or paintings as opposed to prose or poetry, but his thoughts and beliefs were understood just the same. In his eight-plate piece, The Rake's Progress, Hogarth depicts a wanna-be playboy, Tom Rakewell, floundering his new-found inheritance. Hogarth stated that he witnessed many of these counterfeit individuals in many popular venues, and emulated their behavior in his series of engravings, through the character of Rakewell.