Ships, hunters and anatomists. Hogarth and Hume

Did David Hume and William Hogarth know each other? Did either man ever mention the other in his writings? Does Hume’s Standard of Taste (1757) refer to Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty (1753)? These are the questions this essay asks. They are questions that cannot be answered with any degree of certainty. Yet we know that both men were acquainted with the painter Allan Ramsay, who refers to each in The Investigator (1755); moreover, Hogarth’s Analysis echoes Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1739– 40) and his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). Hogarth argues that beauty and ‘fitness’ have an intimate ‘connexion’, illustrating this contention with various examples, including those of a building and a sailing vessel. He also resorts to the analogy of hunting: ‘Pursuing is the business of our lives,’ he asserts, and intricacy may be said ‘to lead the eye a kind of chace’. His readers are invited to follow an ‘anatomical enquiry’ and discover the principles of grace. In Hume’s Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, the philosopher delivers a parallel argument. He celebrates the marriage of beauty and ‘utility’, and offers similar examples, including a building and a ship. Again, in the Treatise, he compares the passion of philosophy to the pursuit of hunting, and describes his own philosophy as an ‘anatomy of human nature’. Conversely, in his Standard of Taste, Hume shows far more sympathy for critics than does Hogarth, whose attacks recall Du Bos’s Réflexions critiques (1719) while foreshadowing Ramsay’s Investigator. Relying on textual analysis and confrontation, the present essay charts some of the philosophical resonances of The Analysis of Beauty and attempts an assessment of Hogarth’s challenging – and challenged – place in the aesthetic debate of his time.