Satire on False Perspective

Maker William Hogarth (British, 1697-1764)

Additional Title(s)

Frontispiece to Kirby's perspective

Collections

British Drawing Highlights

ClassificationsDRAWINGS

Dateca.1753

Mediumblack pen and ink and wash with brown pen and ink on paper mounted on laid paper

Dimensionssheet/ image: 8 3/8 x 6 5/8 in. (21.3 x 16.8 cm.) mat: 19 x 12 1/2 in. (48.3 x 31.8 cm.)

InscribedInscribed in iron gall ink in bottom right of verso in William Esdaile's hand: Frontispiece to his Perspective./ 1825 WE Bakers sale N120 x Given to Mr Baker 14 Augt 1781 by Mr Kirbys daughter

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

Status

Not on view

Label TextHogarth designed this drawing to be the frontispiece to a treatise on the theory and practice of perspective drawing, published by Joshua Kirby in 1754 (on view nearby). It is filled with humorous visual examples of false perspective. A woman leans out of a window to light the pipe of a man standing on a hill some distance behind her. A signpost on a building in the foreground is partially obscured by trees growing in the middle ground. The fishing line of a figure in the foreground dips into a stream in the middle distance. In depicting the wrong way to draw, Hogarth’s satiric image reveals his mastery of perspective and his ability to construct complex spatial relationships (2022).

Object number75.19

Terms