HOGARTH, William.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Signed receipt. An engraved receipt signed by Hogarth to a subscriber to his aesthetic treatise, The Analysis of Beauty. Hogarth dated the receipt 5 June 1752 and addressed it to a recipient, the latter erased to illegibility.Subscribers received the receipt upon their first five-shilling payment. The illustration shows Columbus breaking an egg so that it will stand on its end. Although the solution was later dismissed as something anyone could have done, Columbus alone had conceived the idea. Hogarth used the image "in order to suggest the analogy between his discovery of the 'Line of Beauty' and Columbus's 'Discovery of the New World'. He applies the story to his Analysis by adding two eels on the plates which form 'Lines of Beauty'. The implication... is that he expects the same scepticism from the connoisseurs. The composition parodies a Last Supper, suggesting that he is the Messiah of art" (Paulson, pp. 143-4).

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