William Hogarth and David Garrick – the painter and the actor

(L) William Hogarth (1697-1764) and his pug, self-portrait 1745; (R) David Garrick (1717-1779) portrait by Thomas Gainsborough 1770

A new play about the friendship between Willim Hogarth and David Garrick

Gareth Armstrong’s play Round about Hogarth opens this week at Theatre at the Tabard, about the relationship between the artist William Hogarth and the actor David Garrick – two towering figures in the cultural life of 18th century England.

One the satirist / portrait painter / engraver / cartoonist and writer who we claim as Chiswick’s best-known historical figure; the other the celebrity actor who changed the style of acting in this country forever – from the bombastic to the realistic – Garrick’s celebrity was due in no small part due to his friend’s printed images, which made him recognisable to a wider public.

The playwright

Gareth Armstrong

Gareth Armstrong is also an actor, who has played leading roles in most of the UK’s regional theatres, and has performed in the West End and in Stratford and London as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He also has many television credits from Z Cars and Dr Who to Casualty and EastEnders, as well as radio credits for recurring roles in BBC Radio 4’s long-running soap The Archers.

As a playwright he is best known for his one-man show Shylock, which won awards worldwide. A Chiswick resident, more recently he has written Fondly Remembered and A Critical Stage, which both premiered at the Theatre at the Tabard.

Gareth has written a guest blog for The Chiswick Calendar about the fascination Hogarth and Garrick, these two larger than life characters, hold for him, and why he was inspired to write Round about Hogarth:

READ ALSO: Round about Hogarth – a new play by Gareth Armstrong

Here, Jenny de Montfort, one of the organisers of the Chiswick Book Festival, looks at their relationship of the two great 18th century figures through the pictures we have of them.

David Garrick as Richard III, by William Hogarth (1745); Walker Gallery, Liverpool

The subjects – ‘Two fiercely opposing temperaments who dominated their tumultuous age’

By Jenny de Montfort

Hogarth’s painting of David Garrick as Richard III is perhaps the most famous picture of the actor, and the most representative of their friendship, which was beneficial to both of them.

It was painted in 1745, only four years after Garrick made his professional debut. He appeared in the title role of Richard III in 1741 and his performance was the talk of the town. To say he caused a sensation would be almost an understatement, he nailed it.

His success led Alexander Pope, (another Chiswick resident), who saw him perform three times during this period, to pronounce: “that young man never had his equal as an actor, and he will never have a rival”.

Although Garrick did not commission the Richard III picture, he took a proprietary interest in it. From the Letters of David Garrick edited by Little and Kahrl, he wrote to Somerset Draper in 1745 “inquiring how Hogarth was getting on with the picture and whether he intended to engrave it”.

The painting is taken from the famous tent scene before the Battle of Bosworth, where he is haunted by the ghosts of all those he had murdered. The Walker gallery describes the painting:

‘Garrick’s body is contorted into a ‘serpentine’ line – a stretched ‘S’ shape that Hogarth considered distinctly beautiful. He later made this shape the basis of his theoretical treatise The Analysis of Beauty published in 1753.

‘This first major Shakespearian picture is not just a portrait but also a grand history painting in which Hogarth emphasises England’s importance. He believed that an incident from English rather than ancient history could be used to teach a moral lesson’.

On a more prosaic note; Jonathon Jones wrote this description for the Guardian in May 2000:

‘Garrick didn’t commission this painting, but he was a star so Hogarth knew it would sell. He got £200 selling it to Thomas Duncombe for it and the print version made Garrick’s face available for anyone to pin on the wall. Hogarth was reported to have bragged that he had earned more from this painting than any other portrait painter was known to receive.

‘Hogarth has captured the transformation of identity that people thought they saw when Garrick was on stage. Garrick’s face looks past us at shadows, is absorbed in terrors we can’t see. This is the eve of the Battle of Bosworth Field where Richard will be killed. He has woken from dreams he blames on his ‘coward conscience’. This is a humpless, vulnerable Richard.

‘The painting is full of images of theatrical illusion. Garrick/ Richard’s armour, the disguise he wears to fight, lies to one side. The tent is opened up like the curtains of a stage. Hogarth heightens our sense that Garrick is wearing a costume by having the heavy clothes fill the picture and the ruff push at his neck. The crown in the tent is huge, another poor fit for Richard. Even the background is ambiguous, the fire is real enough, but the lack of action makes it tempting to see this as a stage backcloth.

‘The naked, direct expression on Garrick’s face makes all the props and costume irrelevant. He is unshaven, his hair is wild, his brow furrowed. The palm of his hand is held out to ward off ghosts but it also suggests open-handedness. Garrick conceals nothing’.

Besides their personal friendship, Garrick and Hogarth were linked by their common preoccupation with representing the passions and the critical self-reflection of painting and the stage.

Garrick and Hogarth, or the Artist Puzzled; © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Sharing a love of the ‘merry, facetious, mad and nonsensical’

Hogarth also painted David Garrick with his wife, the Viennese dancer Eva-Maria Veigel (1725-1822), known as Violette. Apparently, the artist and sitter quarrelled over this portrait and although Garrick paid £15 for the painting in 1763, it was in Hogarth’s studio at the time of the artist’s death in the following year.

It is perhaps unsurprising Hogarth and Garrick quarrelled over the painting. The relationship between the two was widely known and the British Museum holds this satirical print entitled Garrick and Hogarth, or the Artist Puzzled. David Garrick liked to infuriate William Hogarth by changing his expression constantly. Hogarth was notoriously short-tempered and Garrick enjoyed teasing him.

The two men sparred but also shared a love of being ‘merry, facetious, mad and nonsensical’, as described in a letter to the Rev John Hoadly who invited the pair to stay.

The Reverend had provided the commentaries for A Rake’s Progress, and he would have enjoyed Garrick’s company because he would like to have been an actor himself, but the church was more profitable. Hogarth painted his brother Benjamin Hoadly which hangs in Tate Britain.

The Rev. John Hoadly was at the time chaplain to the Prince of Wales. He invited Hogarth and Garrick to stay in his rectory at Old Alresford in Winchester in 1746, and Garrick wrote a bawdy play entitled Rag and Jaw to entertain themselves during their visit.

It was a play upon the characters of Brutus and Cassius in Julius Caesar. Garrick played Cassy-arse and the Reverend played Brute-arse. Hogarth played Grilliardo, the head cook to the Devil. He was unable to remember his lines so he had them written on a lantern he held.

Georgian humour was at times very base, but all three men clearly enjoyed the facetious and merry side of life.

Hogarth’s house in Chiswick

A small world, culturally speaking

Hogarth’s house in Chiswick was his country house, where he lived with his wife Jane Thornhill. Theirs was a love match; they eloped against her father’s wishes, but they had no children together. They were clearly fond of children though, as Hogarth was a great supporter of Thomas Coram’s foundation for foundlings and he and Jane fostered foundling children.

Hogarth established a tradition among his fellow artists of giving artworks to the Foundation. He invited a very young Thomas Gainsborough to join this group, spotting his talent. Gainsborough later painted what is perhaps the best known portrait of Garrick, in which he is just sitting for the artist, rather than acting (see top of this page).

David Garrick in The Provoked Wife; portrait by Johann Zoffany, 1763

Another artist who was a contemporary of Hogarth’s in Chiswick was Johan Zoffany (1733-1810), who lived at Strand on the Green and made his living painting portraits at the royal court.

READ ALSO: Johann Zoffany in Chiswick

When they first came to London the Zoffanys lived in Covent Garden while Johann attended William Hogarth’s Academy in St Martin’s Lane and in the early 1760s, when Hogarth was old and ill, Zoffany took over the job of promoting David Garrick, who wanted a series of theatrical portraits, including some of his most successful roles’

Zoffany’s theatrical paintings are considered to be among his finest achievements.

Urns gifted by Garrick; Hogarth’s statue on Chiswick High Road; photograph Jon Perry

A suitably theatrical send off

When the Hogarths bought their second home in Chiswick in 1749, David Garrick gave them two lead urns to decorate the gates. The originals are now in the Gunnersbury Park Museum and the ones you see today are replicas.

The inscription of William Hogarth’s tomb is also testament to their deep friendship. On the North side it is written with a laurel wreath, a palette and a book inscribed Analysis of Beauty, a mask, portfolio decorated with oak leaves and acorns, under which are the following lines by his friend Mr GARRICK.

Farewell, great painter of mankind
Who reach’d the noblest point of art
Whose pictur’d morals charm the mind,
And through the eye correct the heart.

If genius fire thee, reader, stay,
If nature touch thee, drop a tear,
If neither move thee, turn away,
For HOGARTH’S honour’d dust lies here.

Jenny de Montfort is one of the organisers of the Chiswick Book Festival

Read more stories on The Chiswick Calendar