The “Floating Urbanities” of Utamaro and Hogarth. Pictures for Women?

The famous printmakers and painters William Hogarth (1697-1764) and Kitagawa Utamaro (c.1753-1806) lived worlds apart. What little Hogarth knew of Asian art fell under the broad heading of Chinoiserie: lacquer, porcelain, and figurines popular in Britain since the East India Company traded out of Hirado, Japan c.1613-23. As late as the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London – almost a century after Hogarth’s death – the specific qualities of Japanese art remained officially a subset of Chinese achievement. Utamaro was equally unaware of European art.

Art historians like to see verifiable aesthetic influence of the sort Japanese art so powerfully exercised on British artists beginning in the 1860s. That wasn’t the relationship between Utamaro and Hogarth, but their remoteness can free us to consider connections other than those of cause and effect. Hogarth and Utamaro were strategically involved with the thriving commerce in prints in their respective metropolises and societies. Both struggled against competition and state censorship. We can also witness the unstable vicissitudes of two of the 18th century’s most vibrant visual cultures in these artists’ signature trade in images of women.

Both artists offered the many viewers of their prints infinitely intricate typologies of women and their activities. Hogarth mirrored the shifting social sands of London through endless anecdote. Utamaro construed Edo’s visual culture of women more simply and subtly but with no less purpose. Seeing this work together, we may productively reverse common opinion that would contrast Utamaro’s connoisseurial appreciation of women with Hogarth’s overt moralizing.

Mark A. Cheetham is a Professor of art history at the University of Toronto and an independent curator.

Related Links

William Hogarth’s London. Video (and transcript) of Robin Simon, the editor of The British Art Journal, speaking about Hogarth as part of the 2007 Visual Impressions of London lecture series at Gresham College.

List of Works in Exhibition

Kitagawa Utamaro (Japanese c. 1753-1806)

Woman Performing Hobby Horse Dance, late 18th-early 19th century, woodcut, Collection of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Fred and Isobel Pollard Collection
The Lovers Mikkatsu and Akane-ya Hanschichi, 1798, woodcut, Collection of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Fred and Isobel Pollard Collection
In the Nursery, n.d., woodcut, Collection of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
Doll Festival, late 18th century, woodcut, Collection of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Gift of Mrs. H.A. Dyde, Edmonton
Rain Night, late 18th century, woodcut, Collection of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Gift of Mrs. H.A. Dyde, Edmonton
Mid-Autumn Moon Viewing, late 18th century, woodcut, Collection of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
Courtesan and Two Kamuro Promenading on a City Street, 19th century, woodcut , Collection of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. James Langley

Kitagawa Utamaro II (Japanese, died 1831)

Man & Woman, n.d., woodcut , Collection of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Gift of Mr. Theodore Lande

William Hogarth (English 1697-1764)
Engravings on extended loan from Dundurn Castle to the McMaster Museum of Art (unless noted)

Analysis of Beauty, Plate 2, 1753
Boys Peeping at Nature: Receipt for Moses Brought to Pharaoh’s Daughter and Paul Before Felix, 1752
Southwark Fair, 1733
The Harlot’s Progress, Plate 1, 1733-1734
The Four Times of the Day—Morning, 1738
The Shrimp Girl, printed 1782
engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi (Italian 1725-1815)after Hogarth’s painting of 1740-45, copperplate stipple engraving/etching
Taste in High Life, printed 1808, engraved by Samuel Phillips (English, active 1790-1810)
The Rake’s Progress, Plate 4, 1735
Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn, 1738, Engraving, McMaster Museum of Art, Gift of Dr. Paul Fritz, 1994

Meissen Neue-Ozier

moulded punch bowl and cover with Hogarth motif, c.1780
Porcelain, Private collection

Francis Cotes (English 1726-1770)

Portrait of Lady Ripton, n.d., pastel on canvas, Private collection