William Hogarth - The Analysis of Beauty (1753) Plate 1

Plate 1 of William Hogarth’s 'The Analysis of Beauty' (1753) was, like Rowlandson's print, 'A Statuary's Yard', also inspired by the sculptor John Cheere’s famous sculpting yard at Hyde Park Corner. It foregrounds a similarly strange juxtaposition of limbs artificial, human and dismembered, revealing an almost paradoxical fascination with beauty and apparent mutilation. Hogarth here includes copies of well-known classical sculptures including the Farnese Hercules, the Antinous, the Laocoon and the Medici Venus.

- Professor Christine Gerrard, University of Oxford (2018)