Plate one, from A Harlot's Progress

Prints and Drawings

1732

William Hogarth
English, 1697-1764

One of Hogarth’s four major print cycles of “modern moral subjects” based on his paintings, A Harlot’s Progress is a tale of innocence led astray. As indicated by its title, which subverts that of John Bunyan’s popular Christian allegory, the 1678 Pilgrim’s Progress, Hogarth’s project traces a country girl’s loss of purity and resulting imprisonment, illness, and death. Here the gullible girl, Moll Hackabout, is seduced by the promises of a historical madam, Mother Needham, who is dressed respectably to lure naïve London newcomers into her fashionable brothel.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: William Hogarth
Title: Plate one, from A Harlot's Progress
Place: England (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1732
Medium: Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions: Image: 30 × 37.5 cm (11 13/16 × 14 13/16 in.); Plate: 32 × 39.2 cm (12 5/8 × 15 7/16 in.); Sheet: 43.4 × 53.7 cm (17 1/8 × 21 3/16 in.)
Credit Line: The Amanda S. Johnson and Marion J. Livingston Fund
Reference Number: 2015.216.1
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/228937/manifest.json

Paulson 121 II/II

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.