The Denunciation 1729

William Hogarth made "The Denunciation," sometime in the first half of the 18th century in England. Hogarth’s paintings are full of the drama and moral commentary that was the bread and butter of the London stage. Here we see a scene of supposed fraud and scandal. It appears that a young woman has been caught in a compromising situation. The painting is an interesting document of the relationship between theatre and everyday life, and between private scandals and public judgement, in Georgian London. Hogarth was fascinated by the ways in which new institutions like newspapers and the courts were changing the way people lived. As art historians, we can look to court records and newspapers to see how Hogarth’s images engaged with the culture of his time. We can understand his work as something that is contingent on social and institutional context.