Morality and Mortality: Death Portrayed in Hogarth’s ‘Modern Moral Series’ and Mourning in Georgian Britain

Some of William Hogarth’s (1697-1764) most famous artworks are his ‘modern moral subjects’, such as The Rake’s Progress and Marriage a la Mode, a series images that commented on many of the significant moral issues of his time. This talk will specifically discuss the way that Hogarth’s morality series treats death as a ‘final judgement’ or ‘pre-determined fate’, something that follows the rise and fall of his main characters. More broadly, this talk will describe the practice of mourning in Georgian Britain, giving a glimpse into how people in the long eighteenth century dealt with grief and loss.

Katie Hinchliffe is the Senior Visitor Experience Officer at Hogarth’s House and Boston Manor House, working as part of the Historic Houses Team at the London Borough of Hounslow.  She freelances both as a classically-trained soprano and as a lecturer, focusing on fashion, decorative art, and social history, in particular from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She has spoken for the V&A, the Royal Parks, and Arts and Crafts Hammersmith, and her lecture subjects include The Great Square of Venus: Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress and Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, Handel’s London, Victorian Mourning and the Good Death, Japonisme and The Mikado, and Fashion Victims: Deadly Victorian Textiles.

Admission to this talk is free but we encourage you to make a £5 donation for each talk, if you are able, which will be divided equally between the twelve participating organisations. If you wish to request tickets for more than one talk, please note that you can checkout and pay for them all in one go by clicking on ‘continue shopping‘ at the bottom of the screen in which you select your delivery option. 

The talk will start at 7 pm and last for approximately 30 minutes with time being allowed for questions and answers at the end. It will be chaired by Professor Judith Hawley of the Department of English, Royal Holloway, University of London. It will end at or before 8 pm. 
You will be sent a link by email an hour before the lecture begins and you should follow this link at the appropriate time to join the audience.

Get your free tickets here: Morality and Mortality – a talk from the Love & Death series (londonluminaries.com)