An Introduction to The Humours of an Election
Paintings in series
The Humours of an Election, (1754-55) comprises just four paintings, unlike the earlier series also owned by Soane, A Rake’s Progress (1734), which has eight scenes. Larger and infinitely more assured works, An Election is widely thought to be the most finely painted of Hogarth’s series of ‘Modern Moral Subjects’. In his Autobiographical Notes, Hogarth claimed credit for inventing, in the 1730s, the genre of painted pictorial sequences that told a story: ‘[I] turn[ed] my thoughts to still a more new way of proceeding, viz painting and Engraving moder[n] moral Subject[s] a Field unbroke up in any Country or any age.’ They were innovative because the pictorial narratives showed aspects of contemporary eighteenth-century life in series, though there were Italian engraved precedents. The Humours of an Election was the last of these series that Hogarth painted and its subject matter - the corruption endemic in the eighteenth-century electoral process - is part of an established history of political satire in Britain.¹

From painting to engraving
As with A Rake’s Progress the paintings of An Election were essentially preparatory works for engravings which Hogarth sold in sets, a lucrative practice. But the fact that they are so highly finished suggests that he hoped to sell them independently. The subscription for An Election was announced in March 1754 and the first plate advertised as ready for subscribers in February 1755. Dissatisfied with his own attempts to engrave the first scene, he employed French engravers and the last three plates were not issued until 1758. In February 1757 Hogarth announced in The London Evening Post that he was ‘obliged to inform the Subscribers to his Election Prints, That the three last cannot be publish’d till about Christmas next, which Delay is entirely owing to the Difficulties he has met with to procure able Hands to engrave the Plates.’²

Purchase and location
Like many of Soane’s purchases, The Humours of an Election had a significant provenance that enhanced the paintings’ value in his eyes.³ They previously belonged to David Garrick, one of the foremost Shakespearean actors of his day, whom Soane greatly admired, becoming a founding member of the Garrick Club.⁴ The paintings’ elaborate Rococo style frames are fine mid-eighteenth-century examples. It is not known whether they were commissioned by Hogarth himself, or by Garrick. If the latter he may have consulted Hogarth as the two were great friends. If the former the frames could be tentatively attributed to the only framers documented to have worked for Hogarth, the Gossett family, either Gideon Gossett (fl. 1744 - d. 1785) or Isaac Gosset (1713 - 1799), as their elaborate form is more consistent with French Huguenot carvers than English artisans.⁵

Soane bought An Election in June 1823 from the sale of the effects of Mrs Garrick at Christie's. John Britton recounted the story of the purchase in 1827: ‘This set of pictures ... was purchased by Mr. Garrick of the artist, under peculiar circumstances, for a small sum, - about two hundred pounds, and bought by Mr. Soane at the dispersion of that eminent actor’s effects, in June 1823, for £1,732. The learned and accomplished auctioneer [James Christie the Younger], when he knocked down the lot, neatly and appropriately remarked to this effect: - "As Returning Officer, I have the honour of declaring John Soane Esq. is the successful candidate in this warmly contested Election"’.⁶ The purchase price of £1,650 guineas, or £1,732 10s 0d reflects the very fine standard of the paintings. By comparison Soane would purchase the house at 14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 14 October 1823 for less, just £1,480.⁷ It is tempting to believe that the large canvases in their grand frames were at least partially responsible for Soane’s purchase of number 14: there was no obvious place for such large works elsewhere in his house and his first action was to build the Picture Room to the rear of the property, where the paintings still hang to this day in their original positions on the north and south planes.

The political context
The late seventeenth and early eighteenth century saw Britain governed by a constitutional Monarchy. Within parliament Members were aligned with one of two loose ‘parties’: ‘Whig’ or ‘Tory’, unless they were consciously ‘Independent’. In simple terms Toryism became identified with Anglicanism (particularly the high Church with its whiff of Catholicism and inferred Jacobitism) and the squirearchy, a term which describes small-to medium-scale country landowners. Whigs were associated with the Protestant Succession, a policy of taxation, tolerance of religious dissenters, aristocratic landowning families and the financial interests of the wealthy middle classes.⁸ However, this simplification ignores the fact that during the first half of the eighteenth century these groups were not always clearly defined and their policies were not always as distinct from each other as in modern political parties: alternative or multiple interests and allegiances were possible. For example, whether ‘Whig’ or ‘Tory’, it was not unusual to also be allied to a ‘Court’ or ‘Country’ interest. A ‘Court’ interest in the House of Commons comprised those Members whose first loyalty was to the monarch and his or her ministers, and not to a party or faction. A ‘Country’ interest suggested opposition to the administration and defending the true interests of the kingdom - preservation of liberty and the establishment of frugal and honest government - against the self-interested machinations of corrupt courtiers.⁹

In addition to ‘parties’ or ‘interests’ the wealth, status and patronage of individual grandees, or kinship groups (many of the ruling families were inter-related) could be what drew MPs to one faction or another in Parliament. Patronage also reached beyond the House of Commons. Patronage and client networks linked nobles wielding national influence and enjoying access to the monarch, to local notables¹⁰ and to the common elector. An elector might align himself with the group that could offer him the most in return, be that a position of power within the administration, money, gifts, or simply local employment. With political ideals shifting and multiple interests at play, arguably the most constant element within early eighteenth-century politics was the notion of patronage, which was generally only a step away from corruption.

The Humours of an Election is a satire on the parlous state of the political nation in mid-eighteenth-century Britain, specifically parodying the 1754 Oxfordshire county election. Between 1710 and 1754 Oxfordshire was a Tory stronghold and the two parliamentary seats were not contested. In 1754 two Whig candidates, Sir Edward Turner and Lord Parker, supported by Whig grandees the Duke of Marlborough and Lords Macclesfield and Harcourt stood for parliament against the incumbent Tory MPs, Lord Wenman and Sir James Dashwood. After forty years without contest the Oxfordshire election became a talking point. According to The London Evening Post ‘every British Heart is full of the Oxfordshire Election which is become the chief subject of Conversation in the remotest corners of the Island.’¹¹

In the 1750s votes were made in public and recorded for posterity.¹² The right to vote was limited to men, according to specific criteria depending upon whether they lived in a county or a borough. In the counties the ancient forty-shilling freeholder franchise prevailed: the vote belonged to those with freehold property worth £2 [40 shillings] or more.¹³ In Oxfordshire this equated to an electorate of around 4,000¹⁴ and these eligible men expected to have their vote bought by the candidates and their patrons. The Oxfordshire election became a byword for bribery, corruption and foul play. It was ‘probably the most notorious county election of the century: no expense or chicanery was spared by either side.’¹⁵ Henry Pelham, then the Prime Minister, ‘with the King’s consent and knowledge’, promised £7,000 towards the Whigs’ election expenses, and the Tories spent over £20,000—of which over £8,000 was raised by public subscription.¹⁶

Four stages of the political process
Hogarth captures four elements of the election process in his paintings: the elaborate entertainment of the townsfolk to win their support, the flagrant bribery of the country electors, the shenanigans associated with polling day itself and the ‘chairing’ of the winners through the town. Collectively the paintings depict the chaotic consequences of a political system built on the mutual avarice and dishonesty of both the candidates and the electorate. The pictures are typically Hogarthian: intelligent, intricate and rich with allusion. Yet, despite their complexity, through their use of humour, familiar locations and stereotypical characters, they effortlessly lay bare the networks of patronage and corruption which sustained the eighteenth-century political system.

Chairing the Member
The Humours of an Election IV: Chairing the Member, refers to the practice, familiar in the eighteenth century, of the two successful candidates processing around the town carried on elaborate chairs by their supporters, usually part of a day of feasting and celebration but often an occasion for mob violence or protest if the winning candidates were considered unpopular or corrupt. Hogarth depicts the chairing of the new Tory Members of Parliament for his imaginary ‘Guzzledown’ as a scene of chaos, catastrophe and discord, using mock heroic allusions, not least to Charles Le Brun’s (1619-90)The Battle of Arbela¹⁸ to exaggerate the complete absence of control or discipline in the scene.

The setting is the main street of a small market town which bridges a large stream and is almost enclosed by three buildings. Each building alludes to one of the three pillars of the state, and each is revealed to be corrupted or weakened in some way. On the right is a church made of solid brick, its arched window covered with wooden louvres and a sundial with the date ‘1755’ affixed to its wall representing morality and convention. However the graveyard’s consecrated ground has been desecrated by two cheeky chimney sweeps, their hands and bodies covered with soot. They have scavenged a skull-and-crossbones and perched it on the gate-pier in front of the church to display it to the procession below. The sweeps recall the fatal shooting of a chimney sweep, Joseph Holloway, by a Captain Turton, during the 1754 Oxfordshire election, a typical example of Hogarth highlighting injustice, as Turton, after a seven-hour trial, was found not guilty in just seven minutes.¹⁹ In the central background is the town hall or civic centre, with its neat modern sash windows, plain and unimposing, reflective of local administration and government. To the left is a red-brick building still being constructed to the rear and which is stylistically incoherent, the good solid red-brick of the Augustan era supporting both a classical Serlian window and Chinoiserie fretwork overdoor. This edifice houses a group of Whigs on the first floor and on the second someone writing at a desk in front of laden bookshelves, perhaps a lawyer or clerk as the associated print labels it an ‘Indintur[e]’ [sic]. The building is incomplete and seems uncertain as to the form it should take, not unlike the ever-changing party-political allegiances and burgeoning commercial and industrial interests of its inhabitants.

In the foreground one of the two successful Tory candidates is shown as he is starting to topple from a carved and padded chair which is being carried shoulder high by four Tory supporters, the characters around him creating a complex vignette of interlinked mishaps.²⁰ In front of the procession two men are fighting. A sailor with a peg-leg wearing Whig colours, blue coat and wide trousers is brandishing a club at a white-shirted country labourer, stereotypically Irish according to his curly ginger hair, presumably supporting the Country or Tory interests, who in turn has swung his threshing tool behind his head ready to attack the sailor and accidentally caught one of the chairmen on the temple. The chairman stumbles, causing the candidate’s downfall. A goose flies over the candidate’s head, mocking him: by comparison Lebrun’s The Battle of Arbela, depicted an eagle flying above the head of a victorious Alexander the Great but this MP is no Alexander. Lebrun’s The Battle at the Milvian Bridge (1666) is also recalled, but unlike the Milvian Bridge spanning the Tiber in Rome, the candidate’s bridge spans a slurry-filled stream. The skill with which Hogarth depicts yet another still life – the red, white and blue flowers beneath the bridge, only serves to highlight the comparative unsightliness of the gloomy arch beneath the bridge and murky water. As the candidate tumbles, his wife, finely dressed in peach and lace, watching the procession from the elevated position behind the church wall, ‘faints away’ and needs to be supported by her Black maidservant whilst her old nursemaid attempts to revive her by holding a phial of hartshorn under her nose.²¹ Between the brawling labourer and the toppling chair, a sow and her piglets are charging towards the stream and have knocked a countrywoman over, her feet just visible flailing over the sows back. This is a reference to the miracle of the Gadarene Swine - when Jesus cast the demons that had possessed a madman into the bodies of pigs which as a result ran down a steep cliff into the sea - is pointed and indicates the mindless flight to danger and destruction implicit in the state of the rotten and venal British political system.

Not only is the candidate falling but the procession has been halted by an ass belonging to a butcher carrying a load of offal, stopping to eat a thistle and blocking its way. The butcher’s long stringy red hair suggests he is a Scotsman.²² A tame, muzzled dancing bear belonging to the sailor also stops, attracted by the offal. The bear and the monkey sitting on its shoulder are presumably an act with which the sailor makes his livelihood, the blue colours on the monkey’s hat suggesting the show ridicules the Tory interest. Incensed, one of the Tory chimney sweeps sitting on the church wall urinates onto the monkey, the monkey rolling his eyes and chattering as the stream of urine hits his back. The whole group is symbolically ‘led’ by a blind fiddler with a long grey beard and ragged clothing who is blithely skipping away oblivious to the chaos and disorder behind him.

On the left-hand side of the painting is a brawny soldier, stripped to the waist, shirt over his arm, red coat lying next to a fence-post and a broken backsword behind him. He has a Whig cockade in his hat and his head is wrapped in a bandage through which blood shows. His broken broadsword suggests he has been fighting in the Whig and has stopped to roll some tobacco from a paper marked ‘…ton^s Best’. We see only the backs of both the soldier and the embattled sailor standing in the stream, which could imply the Government’s lack of concern for the wellbeing of its military forces during a period of significant warfare in Europe.²³ The soldier leans against a milestone inscribed ‘X … MILES / FROM / LONDON’, a reference to unpopular turnpike legislation which insisted upon accurately marked milestones but could also levy tolls. In this context it probably suggests that no-one can reach the Whig politicians without paying to secure access to them, the bruiser doubling as a gate-keeper.²⁴ The Whigs have congregated in the incomplete building on the left side of the painting and are feasting rather than commiserating with each other over their loss. Three servants or cooks carry food towards the building on platters with covers reminiscent of a Chinese hat and the chinoiserie overdoor decoration. Through the first-floor windows can be seen a bewigged man wearing the Garter ribbon, presumably the Duke of Newcastle the Whig Prime Minister,²⁵ addressing a supporter. Another Whig places a comforting hand on the losing candidate’s shoulder. Three more Whigs peer gleefully through the window at the Tory’s misfortune. In Oxfordshire in 1754 the Tories won the election but the poll was so close that the returning officer sent all four candidates to parliament, a ‘double return’. Parliament had to adjudicate as to the legality of some of the votes cast in Oxfordshire and in April 1755 - the same year shown on the sundial on the church and during which the painting was completed - the Whig-dominated House of Commons declared the Whigs the legal winners. The inscription on the sundial ‘PULVIS ET UMBRA SUMUS’, ‘we are but dust and shadows’, is before the eyes of the candidate for Guzzledown as he begins to fall from his chair. He is reminded that his life and his triumph is fleeting, as indeed was the Tories’ success in Oxfordshire.²⁶

In the background the second candidate’s shadow is cast on the wall of the town hall: he is quite literally, we can infer, a shady character. Between the two candidates is a crowd who have theoretically come to celebrate the Tory victory: on the left is an empty beer barrel into which a reveller has crawled to drink the dregs, whilst a second full barrel is manhandled towards the procession by two stout workmen. Most of the crowd are wearing Tory colours but they are also carrying clubs and meat-cleavers, perhaps anticipating violence from the Whigs or intending to inflict it: a motley crew. The only person sporting Whig colours, a woman, is attacking a Tory man with a club while he turns away from her to protect himself. It is rare for Hogarth to depict the ‘crowd as a mass or a mob, generalised into patches of colour or linear approximations,’²⁷ his crowds are usually groups of individuals, finely articulated, performing specific actions. That all the scenes in The Humours of an Election show a rioting mass is surely significant, though whether Hogarth is commenting on the mass disaffection of the un-enfranchised population or the futility of the masses’ attempts to raise their voices or seek reform in a corrupt, venal and unprincipled electoral system is open to interpretation. Notwithstanding their subject matter Hogarth dedicated the engraved prints of the series to governing politicians such as Henry Fox, so perhaps he was himself conflicted about the nature of the relationship between the government and the people of Britain.²⁸

This catalogue entry was prepared by Joanna Tinworth in October 2021. Sir John Soane's Museum is grateful to Emeritus Professor David Bindman for his peer review.

Footnotes
¹ For example a print of 1727 entitled Ready Mony the prevailing candidate, or the Humours of an Election held the General Election of that year to account, BM 1868,0808.3520. The 1734 poem The Humours of a Country Election was prefaced by six scenes depicting its narrative, BM 1858,0417.607. Two of these, like Hogarth’s composition for scenes two and four of An Election, show bribery taking place in front of an inn and the practice of chairing the winning candidates through the town.
² Ronald Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works, 1989, pp.162-63.
³ See the provenance field for this catalogue entry.
⁴ Soane also owned Garrick’s copy of Twenty of the Plays of Shakespeare, 1766, SM 1528. It was bought by Soane from T. & W. Boone on 3 May 1823 for £25 4s. plus £1 5s. commission following the Garrick sale on 23 April 1823. (Priv. Corr. XVI.E.5.5). Inscribed in pencil on first free-endpaper in William Boone's hand This Book was the Gem of Garrick's / sale, and doubtless the finest copy / extant. / Only 12 copies were printed on this / Paper. David Garrick's engraved bookplate is in each volume.
⁵ Christina Scull, The Soane Hogarths, 2007, p.70.
⁶ John Britton, The Union of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting, 1827, p.55.
⁷ Gillian Darley, John Soane, An Accidental Romantic, 1999, p.268 and SM Journal 6.
⁸ https://www.britannica.com/topic/Whig-Party-England
⁹ D.W. Hayton, Eveline Cruickshanks and Stuart Handley, ed. ‘The Politics of the House’, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1690-1715, 2002
¹⁰ Jeremy Black, The politics of Britain 1688-1800, 1993, p.26.
¹¹ Mark Hallett and Christine Riding, Hogarth, Exhibition Catalogue, Tate, 2006, p. 228 quotes The London Evening Post, 30 April - 2 May 1754.
¹² It wasn’t until 1872 that the passing of The Ballot Act enforced voting in parliamentary and municipal elections by secret ballot.
¹³ https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/research/constituencies/constituencies-1754-1790
¹⁴ Christina Scull, The Soane Hogarths, 2007, p. 25.
¹⁵ R. J. Robson, The Oxfordshire Election of 1754, 1949.
¹⁶ https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1754-1790/constituencies/oxfordshire
¹⁷ During the eighteenth century unpopular winners would often be jeered during their chairing or chairing processions could degenerate into mob violence. Sometimes it was felt the risk of violence or abusive behaviour towards winners perceived as corrupt was so great that the chairing could not take place at all as was the case for Sir James Graham at Carlisle in 1820. Middleton mss S76/35/2, 3 quoted in D.R. Fisher, ed. The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1820-1832, 2009, available online at Carlisle | History of Parliament Online (histparl.ac.uk).
¹⁸ The Battle of Arbela, 1669, is held at the Louvre Museum in Paris, Inventory number 2895. It depicts an eagle flying over the head of a victorious Alexander the Great.
¹⁹ The General Evening Post (London) No 3366, Saturday 19 July to Tuesday 22 July 1755.
²⁰ This was said to be a portrait of George Bubb Doddington (1690/91-1762) who was the only prominent Whig MP to lose his seat in the 1754 general election. However in Guzzledown Hogarth depicts the Tories as having won and being chaired.
²¹ John Smith, A Poetical Description of Mr. Hogarth's Election Prints; In Four Cantos. Written Under Mr. Hogarth's Sanction and Inspection, 1759, p.22 mentions the black maidservant, the nursemaid and the hartshorn, which was an historic name for aqueous ammonia derived from the hooves and antlers of red deer.
²² This might be a reference to the ‘Butcher of Cumberland’ A nickname given by the Tories to the Duke of Cumberland (1721-65), the third and youngest son of George II (1683-1760) after he brutally suppressed the Jacobite uprising of 1745.
²³ Notably the War of the Austrian Succession 1740-48 in which 26,400 were killed and wounded and naval losses amounted to 14 ships of the line, 7 frigates, 28 minor ships 3,238 merchant ships and 1,012 naval guns. Micheal Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures 1500-1999, 2017, p.78.
²⁴ Elizabeth Einberg, William Hogarth, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, 2016, p.322.
²⁵ John Nichols (ed.) Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth With a Catalogue of his Works, 1785, p.337. ‘In Plate IV. the old Duke of Newcastle appears at a window.
²⁶ For a reading of the sundial and skull and crossbones as symbols of a general Newtonian subtext to the painting see Elizabeth Einberg, ‘The grand finale: Newton reigns supreme’ in David Bindman, David Ekserdjian and William Palin, eds, Hogarth's Election Entertainment. Artists at the Hustings, Exhibition Catalogue published by Apollo for Sir John Soane's Museum, 2001. pp.8-11.
²⁷ David Bindman, David Ekserdjian and William Palin, eds, Hogarth's Election Entertainment. Artists at the Hustings, Exhibition Catalogue published by Apollo for Sir John Soane's Museum, 2001. pp.3-4.
²⁸ For example the first painting, when engraved, was inscribed as follows: "Painted and the Whole Engraved by Wm. Hogarth./Published 24th Febry. 1755, as the Act directs" and dedication, "To the Right Honourable Henry Fox, &c. &c. &c. This Plate is humbly Inscrib'd by his most Obedient Humble Servt. Wm. Hogarth" BM Cc,2.182. The second dedication was "To His Excellency Sr. Charles Hanbury Williams Embassador [sic] to the Court of Russia’’, BM Ee,4.110; the third "To the Honble. Sr. Edward Walpole Knight of the Bath’’, BM S,2.133; and the fourth "To the Honble. George Hay, one of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty’’, BM S,2.135. Hogarth also painted a portrait of Hay in 1757, now lost. Kilburn, M., 'Hay, Sir George (1715–1778), judge and politician', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Retrieved 15 Dec. 2021, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-12719.

William Hogarth sold The Humours of an Election directly to his friend, the actor David Garrick.¹ Garrick subscribed to a set of engravings of An Election but instead bought the four paintings in around 1762² for the rather low price of about £200.³ Soane purchased An Election from the sale of the effects of Mrs Garrick at Christie's on 23 June 1823. The preamble to the Garrick sale catalogue announces that the effects have been '... brought from the mansion of Mrs Garrick deceased on the Adelphi Terrace and from his villa at Hampton', and mentions 'MORE ESPECIALLY the very famous Original Set of the FOUR ELECTION PICTURES by HOGARTH, the Canvass, the Poll, the Chairing and the Feast, admirable for the variety and strength and spirit of Execution'. In contrast to Garrick around 60 years earlier Soane paid a large sum for the canvases. Soane’s notebook records that ‘At Christie’s bought Hogarth Elect.n 1,650 gns’. The purchase price of £1650 guineas equated to £1,732 10s 0d. Footnotes ¹ Hogarth painted a portrait of David Garrick as Richard III (1745), the role that made the then twenty-four-year-old actor famous. The portrait is now in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. The artist and actor became firm friends. In 1757 Hogarth painted David Garrick and his wife, Eva-Maria Veigel. See Elizabeth Einberg, William Hogarth, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, 2016, pp.274-75, 337-38. ² Bruce Boucher, ‘Soane and Hogarth’ in David Bindman (ed.), Hogarth: Place and Progress, Exhibition Catalogue, Sir John Soane’s Museum, p.19 and Elizabeth Einberg, William Hogarth, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, 2016, p.316. ³ John Britton, The Union of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting, 1827, p.55.

John B. Nichols, Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth, 1781, revised eds. 1782, 1785
John Ireland, Hogarth Illustrated, 3 vols: 1 and 2, 1791 and 1793 (2nd ed.); 3 (supplement), 1798
John Nichols and George Steevens, The Genuine Works of William Hogarth, 3 vols: 1, 1808; 2, 1810; 3, 1817
Britton, Union, 1827, pp. 40, 53-55
Soane, Description, 1830, pp. 15 and 41
Soane, Description, 1835, pp. 16-17
Peter Quennell, 'Hogarth's Election series', History Today, Volume 3, Issue 4, April 1953 (available online at www.historytoday.com/archive)
Paulson, Ronald, Hogarth: His Life, Art and Times, 1971, vol. II, pp. 191-206 and passim
Bindman, David, Hogarth, 1981, pp. 185-189 and passim
David Dabydeen, Hogarth’s Blacks, 1987, pp. 9, 15
Elizabeth Einberg, Manners and Morals: Hogarth and British Painting 1700-1760, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, 1987, cats. 196-199, pp. 209-215
Ronald Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works, 1989, pp. 162-169
Christina Scull, The Soane Hogarths, 1991
Peter Thornton and Helen Dorey, A Miscellany of Objects from Sir John Soane's Museum, 1992, pp. VIII, 44, 126, fig. 38
Ronald Paulson, Hogarth, 1993, Vol. III, pp. 152-184 and passim
David Bindman, Hogarth and his Times: Serious Comedy, Exhibition Catalogue, British Museum, 1997
Lars Tharp, Hogarth's China: Hogarth's paintings and 18th-century ceramics, 1997, pp. 103-105
Jenny Uglow, Hogarth: A Life and a World, 1997, pp. 548-561 and passim
Gillian Darley, John Soane, An Accidental Romantic, 1999
Matthew Craske, William Hogarth, 2000, passim
David Bindman, David Ekserjian and William Palin (eds), Hogarth's Election Entertainment. Artists at the Hustings, exhibition catalogue published by Apollo for Sir John Soane's Museum, 2001
Mark Hallett and Christine Riding, Hogarth, exhibition catalogue, Tate, 2006, cats. 120-123, pp. 228-231
Christina Scull, The Soane Hogarths, second revised edition, 2007, pp. 51-63 and passim
New Description, 2007, pp. 26-30 and 100
Elizabeth Einberg, William Hogarth, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, 2016, pp. 316-324
David Bindman (ed.), Hogarth: Place and Progress, SJSM Exhibition Catalogue, 2019, cats. 52-55
Bruce Boucher, 'Soane and Hogarth' in David Bindman (ed.), Hogarth: Place and Progress, SJSM Exhibition Catalogue, 2019, pp. 17-23
Joanna Tinworth, 'Life in Hogarth's London', Minerva, September/October 2019, pp. 40-45
Jacqueline Riding, Hogarth: Life in Progress, 2021

Hogarth, Tate Britain, London, 2 December 1971 - 6 February 1972
Manners & Morals - Hogarth and British Painting 1700-1760, Tate Britain, London, 15 October 1987 - 3 January 1988
Hogarth's Election Entertainment: Artists at the Hustings, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 23 March - 25 August 2001; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, 6 October 2001 - 6 January 2002
The Soane Hogarths, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 30 March - 19 June 2004; 26 August 2005 - 25 February 2006
Hogarth, Tate Britain, London, 5 February - 29 April 2007
Hogarth: Place and Progress, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 9 October 2019 - 5 January 2020

P53, series
P56, series
P73, series
O2095, provenance