The Four Stages of Cruelty

Finally, in The reward of cruelty, he receives what Hogarth warns is the inevitable fate of those who start down the path Nero has followed: his body is taken from the gallows after his execution as a murderer and is mutilated by surgeons in the anatomical theatre.

The prints were intended as a form of moral instruction; Hogarth was dismayed by the routine acts of cruelty he witnessed on the streets of London.

The series shows a roughness of execution and a brutality that is untempered by the funny touches common in Hogarth's other works, but which he felt was necessary to impress his message on the intended audience.

In common with other prints by Hogarth, such as Beer Street and Gin Lane, The Four Stages of Cruelty was issued as a warning against immoral behaviour, showing the easy path from childish thug to convicted criminal.

[1] Hogarth loved animals, picturing himself with his pug in a self-portrait, and marking the graves of his dogs and birds at his home in Chiswick.

[2] Hogarth deliberately portrayed the subjects of the engravings with little subtlety since he meant the prints to be understood by "men of the lowest rank"[1] when seen on the walls of workshops or taverns.

[3] Instead, Hogarth proceeded to create the engravings himself and announced the publication of the prints, along with that of Beer Street and Gin Lane, in the London Evening Post over three days from 14 to 16 February 1751.

[7][8] Conspicuous in the centre of the plate, he is shown being assisted by other boys to insert an arrow into a dog's rectum, a torture apparently inspired by a devil punishing a sinner in Jacques Callot's Temptation of St.

Hogarth used this notorious slum area as the background for many of his works including Gin Lane and Noon, part of the Four Times of the Day series.

A more tender-hearted boy, perhaps the dog's owner,[9] pleads with Nero to stop tormenting the frightened animal, even offering food in an attempt to appease him.

The absence of parish officers who should be controlling the boys is an intentional rebuke on Hogarth's part; he agreed with Henry Fielding that one of the causes for the rising crime rate was the lack of care from the overseers of the poor, who were too often interested in the posts only for the social status and monetary rewards they could bring.

Elsewhere in the scene, other acts of cruelty against animals take place: a drover beats a lamb to death, an ass is driven on by force despite being overloaded, and an enraged bull tosses one of its tormentors.

Some of these acts are recounted in the moral accompanying the print: The generous Steed in hoary Age, Subdu'd by Labour lies; And mourns a cruel Master's rage, While Nature Strength denies.

The tender Lamb o'er drove and faint, Amidst expiring Throws; Bleats forth it's innocent complaint And dies beneath the Blows.

[17] A woman searching Nero's pockets uncovers pistols, a number of pocket watches—evidence of his having turned to highway robbery (as Tom Idle did in Industry and Idleness),[18] and a letter from Ann Gill which reads: Dear TommyMy mistress has been the best of women to me, and my conscience flies in my face as often as I think of wronging her; yet I am resolved to venture body and soul to do as you would have me, so do not fail to meet me as you said you would, for I will bring along with me all the things I can lay my hands on.

Various features in the print are meant to intensify the feelings of dread: the murder takes place in a graveyard, said to be St Pancras but suggested by John Ireland to resemble Marylebone;[10] an owl and a bat fly around the scene; the moon shines down on the crime; the clock strikes one for the end of the witching hour.

There are also differences in the wording of the letter[1] and some items, like the lantern and books, are larger and simpler while others, such as the man to the left of Tom and the topiary bush, have been removed.

While the surgeons working on the body are observed by the mortar-boarded academics in the front row, the physicians, who can be identified by their wigs and canes, largely ignore the dissection and consult among themselves.

[23] Two skeletons to the rear left and right of the print are labelled as James Field, a well-known boxer who also featured on a poster in the second plate, and Macleane, an infamous highwayman.

[14] The motif of the lone "good man" is carried through to this final plate, where one of the academics points at the skeleton of James Field, indicating the inevitable outcome for those who start down the path of cruelty.

[5] The composition of the scene is a pastiche of the frontispiece of Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica, and it possibly also borrows from Quack Physicians' Hall (c. 1730) by the Dutch artist Egbert van Heemskerck, who had lived in England and whose work Hogarth admired.

[22] An earlier source of inspiration may have been a woodcut in the 1495 Fasciculo di medicina by Johannes de Ketham which, although simpler, has many of the same elements, including the seated president flanked by two windows.

European Magazine reported that he commented to a bookseller from Cornhill (a Mr. Sewell):[5] there is no part of my works of which I am so proud, and in which I now feel so happy, as in the series of The Four Stages of Cruelty because I believe the publication of theme has checked the diabolical spirit of barbarity to the brute creation which, I am sorry to say, was once so prevalent in this country.In his unfinished Apology for Painters he commented further: I had rather, if cruelty has been prevented by the four prints, be the maker of them than the [Raphael] cartoons, unless I lived in a Roman Catholic country.

Charles Lamb dismissed the series as mere caricature, not worthy to be included alongside Hogarth's other work, but rather something produced as the result of a "wayward humour" outside of his normal habits.

In his earlier work Paulson puts him as a pupil of Broughton, killed in a fight with him in 1750, and the Tate Gallery dates Hogarth's sketches to c. 1750.

Since Ireland identifies him as the master of Nourse, he undoubtedly means John Freke, an acquaintance of Hogarth's and surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital from 1729 to 1755 and a Governor from 1736 to 1756.