Oil paint on canvas
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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>
O Roast Beef Old England Gate Calais
Presented by the Duke of Westminster 1895
actions: postures and motions
actions: processes and functions
adults
agriculture and fishing
animals: birds
animals: fish and aquatic life
arch
architecture
arrest
artist, painter
arts and entertainment
bayonet
Calais - non-specific
carrying / holding
cauldron
chef
cities, towns, villages (non-UK)
city wall
countries and continents
crime and punishment
crow
crowd
diseases and conditions
drawbridge
dress: nations/regions
eating
eating and drinking
emaciation
English
features
fish
fisherman / fisherwoman
food and drink
France
French
friar / monk
government and politics
groups
gun, rifle
health and welfare
history
Hogarth, William
kitchen
leisure and pastimes
looking / watching
man
meat
military
named individuals
nationality
obesity
objects
patriotism
people
places
politics and society
politics: Jacobites, c.1688-1745
portraits
poverty
religious
satire
Scotland
Scottish
self-portraits
sitting
social comment
society
soldier
soup
townscapes / man-made features
trading and commercial
walking
weapons
work and occupations
<p>This picture is based on a real event when Hogarth was arrested as a suspected spy in Calais while sketching the gate of the fort. Hogarth is visible in the far left, portrayed as a sharp-eyed observer of his surroundings. But the picture also serves as an allegory of English nationalism. It depicts a collection of xenophobic stereotypes, including underfed French soldiers, an exiled Scottish Jacobite rebel, and a greedy Catholic friar. The imported British beef contrasts with watery French soup. The ‘Old England’ in the title alludes to an idea of England as prosperous and harmonious, again in contrast to France.</p><p><em>Gallery label, June 2022</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
22 October 2001 – 27 June 2004
2004-06-27
22 October 2001 – 27 June 2004
2004-06-27
2001-10-22
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2001-10-22
Hogarth and the Theatre of Life
Collection based display
26 July 2004 – 27 June 2005
2005-06-27
26 July 2004 – 27 June 2005
2005-06-27
2004-07-26
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2004-07-26
Art and National Identity
Collection based display
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
9 June 2010 – 5 September 2010
2010-09-05
9 June 2010 – 5 September 2010
2010-09-05
2010-06-09
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-06-09
Rude Britannia: British Comic Art
Exhibition
2 December 2010 – 14 October 2012
2012-10-14
2 December 2010 – 14 October 2012
2012-10-14
2010-12-02
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-12-02
Gallery 9
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
O the Roast Beef of Old England (‘The Gate of Calais’)
support: 788 × 945 mm
frame: 1072 × 1228 × 105 mm
Presented by the Duke of Westminster 1895
<p>This <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> is Hogarth's comment on his second visit to France in the summer of 1748,
when he was arrested as a spy while sketching the arms of England on the old city gate at Calais. The contemporary diarist George Vertue records in August 1748 that Hogarth and Francis Hayman were 'attempting to draw some Views of Fortifications &amp;c.
were surprized &amp; clapt into the Bastile. from whence they were soon glad to return to England' ('Vertue Note Books III', <em>Walpole Society</em>, vol.22, Oxford 1934, p.142). Hogarth took his revenge with this painting. The title was taken from a
popular tune of the day, which extolled roast beef as the symbol of Britain's wealth and power. </p><p>Numerous xenophobic references indicate Hogarth's low opinion of the French. The huge side of British beef at the exact centre of the picture, destined
for the English inn at Calais, is neatly balanced by the scrawny French soldier at the other side of the drawbridge. A fat friar, the only well-nourished Frenchman in the picture, covetously pokes the beef. In the right foreground, a starving Jacobite
sits with his pathetic meal of an onion and a piece of bread, his overturned cup beside him. The Jacobites, the Scotsmen who fled to France after the unsuccessful Scottish rebellion of 1745, are further symbolised by the black crow which perches atop
the stone cross above the drawbridge. In the tableau framed by the gate, a white dove hangs on an inn sign above the cross - a satirisation of the Catholic Church. The fish-wives in the left foreground ridicule a skate whose unpleasantly human features
resemble their own. To the left of the gate, framed by vegetables, sits Hogarth himself. As he sketches the drawbridge, the arresting officer's hand clasps his shoulder.</p><p><strong>Further reading:</strong><br/>Elizabeth Einberg, <em>Hogarth the
Painter</em>, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, pp.48-9, reproduced in colour</p><p>Terry Riggs<br/>March 1998<!-- end text --></p>
Summary
2005-09-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>This picture is based on a real event when Hogarth was arrested as a suspected spy in Calais for sketching the gate of the fort. Hogarth includes a self-portrait in the far left, portraying himself as a sharp-eyed observer of his surroundings. But the picture also serves as an allegory of English nationalism. It depicts a collection of xenophobic stereotypes, including underfed French soldiers, an exiled Scottish Jacobite rebel, and a greedy Catholic friar. The imported British beef contrasts with the watery French soup.</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-o-the-roast-beef-of-old-england-the-gate-of-calais-n01464" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N01464</span></a> <b>O The Roast Beef of Old England (‘The Gate of Calais’)</b> 1748
<br/></p>
<p>Oil on canvas 788×945 (31×37 5/8)
<br/>Inscribed ‘For Mad.<sup>m</sup> Grandsire at Calais’ on label attached to the cloth under the piece of beef
<br/>Presented by the Duke of Westminster to the National Gallery 1895; transferred to the Tate Gallery 1951
<br/>PROVENANCE Still with the artist in 1761, when exhibited at the SA; ...; according to Nichols, Lord Charlemont by 1781; sold by ‘J. James’ (presumably Lord Charlemont's agent), Christie's 2 May 1874 (58) bt Agnew and sold by them the same year to H.W.F. Bolckow; his sale Christie's 2 May 1891 (107) bt Agnew for the Duke of Westminster
<br/>EXHIBITED SA 1761 (44 as ‘The Gate of Calais’); BI 1814 (120, 117 in some copies of cat.); Dublin 1853 (Fine Arts Section 965); Dublin 1865 (Ancient Masters Section 50); BI 1867 (202); <i>British Deceased Painters</i>, Leeds 1868 (1099); Dublin 1872 (Early British Section 217); RA Winter 1875 (28); BC tour 1946 (2, pl.9); Tate Gallery 1951 (64); BC tour 1960 (8, repr.); Tate Gallery 1971 (136, repr. in col.); <i>Zwei Jahrhunderte englische Malerei</i>, Haus der Kunst, Munich 1979 (28, repr.)
<br/>LITERATURE Nichols 1781, pp.31–2, 110–11, 1782, pp.42–4, 235–41, 1785, pp.49–50, 289–95; Ireland 1798, pp.349–50; Nichols &amp; Steevens, I, 1808, pp.141–54, II, 1810, p.190, engr. III, 1817, pp.172, 253; Nichols 1833, pp.62–4, 359; Dobson 1902, pp.95, 173, 1907, p.204; Vertue III, pp.141–2; <i>Walpole's Correspondence</i>, XX, p. 13; Davies 1946, pp.70–2; Beckett 1949, p.70, fig.161; Burke 1955, pp.227–8; Antal 1962, pp.2–3, 6, 20, 28, 77, 122, 132, 172, 218 n.7, 241 n.78, 248 n.41, pl.III; Paulson 1970, I, pp.202–4, no.180, II, pl.192 (1749 engraving); Baldini &amp; Mandel 1967, p.II, pls.XL (col.), L (detail); Paulson 1971, II, pp.71, 75–8, 86, 129–31, 149, 196, 262, 281, 323, 396, 432 n.23, 436 n.6, 452 n.92, pl.220; Waterhouse 1978, p.177, fig.139; Webster 1979, pp.132, 136, 148, 187 no.158, repr. in col. pp. 149, 150–1 (detail); Bindman 1981, pp. 162, 183, figs. 129 (col.), 130, 131 (details)
<br/></p>
<p>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> is Hogarth's comment on his second visit to France in 1748, when he was arrested in Calais as a suspected spy, and it expresses his profound disenchantment with life on the other side of the Channel.
<br/>
<br/>The first mention of the event comes from Vertue in a passage dated August 1748, but probably written a little later. He reports that a group of artists, consisting of Thomas Hudson, the Van Aken brothers, Hogarth, Hayman, and 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/s/sculpture" title="Glossary definition for 'Sculpture'"><span>sculptor</span></a> Henry Cheere, had gone to Paris, taking advantage of the freeing of the Dover-Calais passage after the May armistice that preceded the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle signed in October that year. His (not necessarily correct) information seems to be that while the others went on from Paris to make a four- or five-week tour of Flanders and Holland, Hogarth and Hayman returned early, and ‘attempting to draw some Views of Fortifications &amp; c, were surprized &amp; clapt into the Bastile, from whence they were soon glad to return to England’.
<br/>
<br/>Next comes a more circumstantial account by Horace Walpole in a letter to Horace Mann, dated 15 December 1748:
<br/>
<br/>Hogarth has run a great risk since the peace; he went to France, and was so imprudent as to be taking a sketch of the drawbridge at Calais. He was seized and carried to the Governor where he was forced to prove his vocation by producing several <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/caricature" title="Glossary definition for 'Caricature'"><span>caricatures</span></a> of the French; particularly a scene of the shore with an immense piece of beef landing for the Lion d'Argent, the English inn at Calais, and several hungry friars following it. They were much diverted with his <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>drawings</span></a> and dismissed him.
<br/>
<br/>Hogarth's own autobiographical notes, written at the end of his life and never published in his lifetime, do not mention the other artists, but broadly substantiate the above (BL Add.MS 27991, here quoted with slightly modernised spelling and punctuation; for an exact transcript see Burke 1955). He expands on his poor impression of France as a place of empty pomp, bigotry and poverty, and notes that the fish women have faces of [word illegible] leather, and soldiers [are] ragged and lean. I [was] seized by one of them and carried to the governor as a spy, as I was sauntering about and observing them &amp; the gate, which it seems was built by the English when the place was in our possession. There is a fair appearance still of the arms of England upon it. As I concealed none of the memorandum I had privately taken and they being found to be only those of a painter for [his] own use, it was Judged necessary only to confine me to my lodging till the wind changed for our coming away to England where I no sooner arrived but set about a Picture wherein I introduced a poor highlander fled thither on account of the Rebellion year before, browsing on scanty french fare, in sight [of] a Sirloin of Beef, a present from England, which is opposed [to] the Kettle of soup maigre. My own figure in the corner with the soldier's hand upon my shoulder is said to be tolerably like.
<br/>The first published account (Nichols 1781, p.31) adds some information which the author had indirectly from the Revd William Gostling of Canterbury, at whose house Hogarth spent the first night on his homeward journey, to the effect that the artist was put in the custody of Grandsire, the landlord of the Lion d'Argent, until his return to England. Nichols also gives the account by ‘an eminent English <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/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>engraver</span></a>, who was abroad when it happened’, thought to be either Thomas Major or Robert Strange, which adds threats of hanging from the Commandant and some rough treatment by the guards, which may or may not be subsequent dramatisation.
<br/>
<br/>Hogarth must have completed the painting within a few months, for an engraving after it by himself and Charles Mosley (see no.108) was published on 6 March 1749 under the title ‘O The Roast Beef of Old England’. A cantata, or ballad, based on the painting and attributed to Hogarth's friend Theodosius Forrest (1728–84) was in print by 1759 (reprinted in full in Nichols 1782, p.237, and Nichols &amp; Steevens, I, 1808, p.148). The theme, however, was not a novel one and Hogarth was partly exploiting existing popular sentiment, as can be seen from an anonymous poem called ‘Beef and Liberty’ published by <i>The Gentleman's Magazine</i> in June 1748 (p.277). This gloats over the wretched existence of Jacobite exiles in France who, having forfeited their birthright to rich British fare with its ‘princely loin’, now have to ‘cringe and starve on Gallia's envy'd coast’, where ‘... soups and sallads shall your board supply,|And the kind priest absolve ye when ye die’. There are even earlier precedents (see O. Baldwin and T. Wilson, ‘250 Years of Roast Beef’, <i>Musical Times</i>, April 1985, pp.203–7).
<br/>
<br/>The main difference between the engraving and the painting is the crow perched atop the cross on the gate. This seems to be a later addition to the painting for, according to Nichols (1781, pp.110–11) ‘soon after it was finished, it fell down by accident, and a nail ran through the cross on the top of the gate. Hogarth strove in vain to mend it with the same colour, so as to conceal the blemish. He therefore introduced a starved crow, looking down on the roast beef, and thus completely covered the defect.’ No obvious repairs to this spot were found when the painting was restored in 1966, and in fact the detail provides a relevant if macabre echo to the scene directly below, where a processional cross, above which a white dove hovers in the shape of an inn-sign, is carried through the streets, juxtaposing, as it were, the very real adulation of the flesh in the foreground with the hollow worship of the ‘spirit’ beyond the gate. Forrest's ballad identifies the soldier with a spoonful of soup as an Irishman who had joined the French army to escape the English gallows, and the man with the beef as Madame Grandsire's cook.
<br/>
<br/>The sirloin itself occupies the exact centre 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/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a>, and is further highlighted by the only patches of pure white in the picture - the cook's cap, cloth and apron. Yet another visual pun is achieved by painting it against one of the chains of the drawbridge, so that it seems to outweigh the brilliantly painted ragged French soldier, placed as if he were a dangling puppet on the other side of a pair of scales. The long shadow across the gate itself leads the eye to a cameo behind his back, where, enclosed in a spiky triangle of carrots, halberd and musket, Hogarth is seen sketching the scene, with a soldier's hand about to grab him by the shoulder. According to Nichols (1781, p.110), the sitter for the fat friar was his friend the engraver John Pine (1690–1756), who as a result became known as Friar Pine, much to his disgust. Hogarth was to paint him again in 1756 in the more dignified disguise of a Rembrandt self-<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>portrait</span></a> (Beaverbrook Foundation, Fredricton, New Brunswick; Beckett 1949, fig.185).
<br/>
<br/>The white cockades in the soldiers' hats, the bullet-hole in that of the Irishman, and the black wound-patch on the Highlander's forehead show that they are supporters of the Stuarts and mercenaries used by the French in battle. In the left foreground a group of leathery-faced market women laugh at the human appearance of the skate, unaware how closely it resembles them. The other side of the dark and shadowy foreground is occupied by the tragic figure of the despairing Jacobite, beside whom lies a scanty meal of raw onion, a dry piece of bread, and an empty overturned rummer.
<br/>
<br/>The arms on the gate are those of England, but it is difficult to know if Hogarth has given an accurate representation of the structure, for already in 1855 Leslie noted that only the drawbridge remained as in this picture (C. R. Leslie, <i>Autobiographical Recollections,</i> 1860, 1, p. 232). It was finally demolished in 1895.</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
actions: postures and motions actions: processes and functions adults agriculture and fishing animals: birds animals: fish and aquatic life arch architecture arrest artist, painter arts and entertainment bayonet Calais - non-specific carrying / holding cauldron chef cities, towns, villages (non-UK) city wall countries and continents crime and punishment crow crowd diseases and conditions drawbridge dress: nations/regions eating eating and drinking emaciation English features fish fisherman / fisherwoman food and drink France French friar / monk government and politics groups gun, rifle health and welfare history Hogarth, William kitchen leisure and pastimes looking / watching man meat military named individuals nationality obesity objects patriotism people places politics and society politics: Jacobites, c.1688-1745 portraits poverty religious satire Scotland Scottish self-portraits sitting social comment society soldier soup townscapes / man-made features trading and commercial walking weapons work and occupations