Oil paint on canvas
Tate Britain
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-hogarth-265" aria-label="More by William Hogarth" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">William Hogarth</a>
Heads Six Hogarths Servants
Purchased 1892
adults
birth to death
boy
children
clothing and personal items
domestic
girl
group
groups
groups
hat, bonnet
man
man, old
named groups
objects
people
portraits
servant
servants of William Hogarth
society
stages of life
woman
work and occupations
<p>This group portrait may have hung in Hogarth’s studio, serving as an advert for his skill in painting. Anyone visiting Hogarth’s house would have been met by his servants. On entering his studio, they could then compare Hogarth’s painted portraits with the real person. The aim would have been to impress, especially anyone considering having their own portrait painted. It demonstrates his ability to capture a likeness in all age groups. Portraits of servants from this period are rare. Hogarth’s decision to paint his servants in this way is unique.</p><p><em>Gallery label, December 2020</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
16 October 2003 – 31 May 2004
2004-05-31
16 October 2003 – 4 January 2004
2004-01-04
2003-10-16
National Portrait Gallery (London, UK)
http://www.npg.org.uk
13 February 2004 – 31 May 2004
2004-05-31
2004-02-13
Scottish National Portrait Gallery (Edinburgh, UK)
2003-10-16
Below Stairs
Loan-out
18 October 2006 – 7 January 2007
2007-01-07
18 October 2006 – 7 January 2007
2007-01-07
2006-10-18
Musée du Louvre (Paris, France)
21 May 2007 – 26 August 2007
2007-08-26
2007-05-21
CaixaForum Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain)
http://www3.lacaixa.es
2006-10-18
Hogarth
Loan-out
7 February 2007 – 29 April 2007
2007-04-29
18 October 2006 – 7 January 2007
2007-01-07
2006-10-18
Musée du Louvre (Paris, France)
7 February 2007 – 29 April 2007
2007-04-29
2007-02-07
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
21 May 2007 – 26 August 2007
2007-08-26
2007-05-21
CaixaForum Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain)
http://www3.lacaixa.es
2007-02-07
Hogarth
Exhibition
12 October 2007 – 31 October 2010
2010-10-31
12 October 2007 – 31 October 2010
2010-10-31
2007-10-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2007-10-12
Hogarth and London
Collection based display
3 February 2009 – 25 April 2009
2009-04-25
3 February 2009 – 26 April 2009
2009-04-26
2009-02-03
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2009-02-03
Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009
Exhibition
11 November 2010 – 3 April 2011
2011-04-03
11 November 2010 – 3 April 2011
2011-04-03
2010-11-11
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-11-11
Blake and Physiognomy
Collection based display
16 November 2012 – 24 July 2022
2022-07-24
16 November 2012
2012-11-16
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2012-11-16
Gallery 16
Collection based display
20 October 2014 – 31 August 2015
2015-08-31
1 May 2015 – 31 August 2015
2015-08-31
2015-05-01
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery (Bristol, UK)
http://www.bristol-city.gov.uk
2014-10-20
Hogarth display
Loan-out
24 October 2014 – 26 April 2015
2015-04-26
20 October 2014 – 26 April 2015
2015-04-26
2014-10-20
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2014-10-24
William Hogarth
Collection based display
Heads of Six of Hogarth’s Servants
support: 630 × 755 mm
frame: 883 × 1009 × 60mm
Purchased 1892
<div class="text">
<p>In its realism, informality and immediacy, this study of William Hogarth’s servants appears to capture each sitter’s individuality. The result is a remarkable and rare portrait of members of the 18th-century British working class. The picture may also have served as a kind of advertisement for Hogarth’s skills as a working portraitist, intended to attract wealthy clients who would have been able to see the painting in Hogarth’s studio.</p>
</div>

Online caption
2023-11-29T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
<p><a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hogarth-heads-of-six-of-hogarths-servants-n01374" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N01374</span></a> <b>Heads of Six of Hogarth's Servants</b> <i>c.</i>
1750–5
<br/></p>
<p>Oil on canvas, 630×755 (24 1/16×29 1/4)
<br/>Purchased by the National Gallery (Lewis Fund) 1892; transferred to the Tate Gallery 1960
<br/>PROVENANCE Mrs Hogarth, from whom inherited by her cousin Mary Lewis 1789, sold Greenwood's 24 April 1790 (44 as ‘The heads of 6 servants of Mr. Hogarth's family’) £5 15s 6d bt ‘Clarke, Strand’, possibly for William Collins of Greenwich, by whom lent to BI in 1817 and Suffolk Street Gallery in 1833; ...; <i>c.</i> 1863 part of stock-in-trade of William Benoni White, sold Christie's 24 May 1879 (244) bt J.K. Wedderburn, sold Christie's 3 June 1892 (98) bt C. Fairfax Murray for the National Gallery
<br/>EXHIBITED BI 1817 (80); <i>British Artists</i>, Suffolk Street Gallery, Winter 1833 (214); <i>Twe Eeuwen Engelsche Kunst</i>, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 1936 (65); <i>La Peinture Anglaise</i>, Louvre, Paris 1938 (67, repr.); BC tour 1946 (3); BC tour 1949 (62, repr.); Manchester 1954 (38); Tate Gallery 1971 (197, repr.)
<br/>LITERATURE Nichols 1782, p.88, 1785, p.98; Nichols &amp; Steevens, II, 1810, p.iv, III, 1817, pp.173*–4*, 197; Nichols 1833, p.383; G. Redford, <i>Art Sales</i>, 1888, II, pp.297–8 (for Benoni White Sale); A. Dobson, ‘The New Hogarth at the National Gallery’, <i>Illustrated London News</i>, 2 July 1892, repr.; Dobson 1902, pp. 130, 148, 161, 182, repr. p.15, 1907, pp. 146, 188, 215, repr. facing p. 146; ‘Mrs Hogarth's Sale’, <i>Burlington Magazine</i>, LXXXV, 1944, p. 258; Davies 1946, p.70; Beckett 1949, p.44, pl.194; Waterhouse 1953, pp. 133–4, pl. 105; Davies 1959, p.68; Antal 1962, pp. 173–4, 249 n.45, pl. 132; Baldini &amp; Mandel 1967, p.112, no. 177, pls. LX-LXI (col.); Paulson 1971, II, pp. 244–6, pl.264; Waterhouse 1978, p.179, fig.141; Webster 1979, pp. 142, 187, no. 162, repr. in col. p.143; Bindman 1981, p. 195, fig. 156. Also repr.: W. Gaunt, <i>The Great Century of British Painting: Hogarth to Turner</i>, pls. 30, 31 (detail)
<br/></p>
<p>One of Hogarth's most spontaneous and masterly works in <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/portrait" title="Glossary definition for 'Portrait'"><span>portraiture</span></a>, this sketch represents, according to reliable sources, six servants of the Hogarth household. It is not known who they are individually, but Samuel Ireland (1794, p.169) mentions that the Hogarths had an old servant called Ben Ives, who could be the old man in the top right corner. Mrs Hogarth is also known to have had a servant called Samuel, and a housemaid who was with them at Chiswick, a ‘Mrs Chappel, of Great Smith Street, Westminster’, who lived to be a centenarian well into the nineteenth century. Some of Mrs Chappel's recollections were used in Edward Draper's ‘Memorials of Hogarth’, <i>Pictorial World</i> 26 September 1874 (quoted in Paulson 1971, II, pp.451–2 n.74). The <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> may have hung in the artist's studio along with other portraits of his family, and could have served to demonstrate his ability to catch a likeness in all age-groups - indeed, the range of flesh <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/t/tone" title="Glossary definition for 'Tone'"><span>tones</span></a> represented is remarkable.
<br/>
<br/>Although the informal directness of the group clearly puts it into the category of ‘friendship’ portraits, painted either for the sheer love of painting or out of affection for the people represented, or both, it could also be seen as a realisation in <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/i/impasto" title="Glossary definition for 'Impasto'"><span>painterly</span></a> terms of the kind of categorising accumulation of heads and objects that are frequent in Hogarth's graphic work and which aim to express the full range of some given concept, in this case all the facial characteristics from youth to age as in the ‘seven ages of man’, a subject already dealt with by him in the surround of Plate 2 of <i>The Analysis of Beauty</i>, 1753.
<br/>
<br/>It is not possible to date the work exactly, but stylistically it would appear to be fairly late. The beginnings of a seventh head, probably female, have been laid-in in the lower left corner, and the left-hand edge of the young woman's bonnet next to it has been narrowed as if to accommodate it. The left edge of the canvas has been cut, removing half of the oval of the laid-in head. The remaining heads have been brought to a high degree of finish, although their placing on the buff ground makes it clear that the painting was never meant to be taken any further. Compositionally, however, the painting is given an overall unity by all the heads being lit from the same side, and each is loosely paired in the angle from which it is seen with the head above or below. At the same time each maintains its separateness by looking out at its own distinct focal point, and the fact that none of their lines of vision intersect creates a sense of balanced dignity unusual in a painting that makes no apparent claim to being a formal <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a>.
<br/>
<br/>The painting is first mentioned by Nichols in 1782, who, when commenting on Hogarth's good relations with his servants, states: ‘of most of these he painted a strong likeness on a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/canvas" title="Glossary definition for 'Canvas'"><span>canvas</span></a> still in Mrs Hogarth's possession’. It was bought at the sale of her collection in 1790 (according to Horace Walpole's annotated copy of the catalogue, published in the <i>Burlington Magazine</i>, LXXXV, 1944) by ‘Clarke of the Strand’. As Nichols &amp; Steevens name the owner of the painting in 1810 as ‘William Collins Esq, of Greenwich’, and state in the subsequent (1817) volume that he had bought it at Mrs Hogarth's sale, it is likely that Clarke was his agent. The lender to the 1833 exhibition is mentioned only as ‘Collins’, so that it could be the same owner, or his descendant. After this the painting reappears in the 1879 sale of the stock-in-trade of the late William Benoni White, dealer in Brownlow Street, Holborn, where it had apparently ‘remained for the last sixteen years since his retirement from business’ (Redford 1888, quoting <i>The Times</i>, 28 May 1879).
<br/>
<br/>Dobson records (<i>Illustrated London News</i>, 1892) that among the volumes of papers formerly owned by Hogarth's patron James Caulfield, 1st Earl of Charlemont, then currently on sale at Quaritch's, was a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/g/graphite" title="Glossary definition for 'Graphite'"><span>pencil</span></a> <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawing</span></a> of this painting, signed with the initials of the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/etching" title="Glossary definition for 'Etching'"><span>etcher</span></a> Richard Livesay, dated 1788, and entitled ‘Hogarth's Servants’. As Livesay was Mrs Hogarth's lodger at Leicester Square and produced many facsimiles after Hogarth's drawings for her, this seems reliable evidence, although no etching seems to have been produced after this drawing.</p>
<p>
<br/><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Elizabeth Einberg and Judy Egerton, <i>The Age of Hogarth: British Painters Born 1675-1709</i>, Tate Gallery Collections, II, London 1988
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-09-23T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
adults birth to death boy children clothing and personal items domestic girl group groups groups hat, bonnet man man, old named groups objects people portraits servant servants of William Hogarth society stages of life woman work and occupations