Social & Political

31x22 cm

Design'd and Engrav'd by W:Hogarth. Published According to Act of Parliament 1747. 
William Hogarth (1697-1764), apprenticed as an engraver, became the most signifiant artist and printmaker of his time, his satirical caricatures and political cartoons establishing the genre. From 1730 Hogarth established his own business publishing and selling his own prints. After his death his plates passed to his wife Jane who continued issuing his prints until her own death in 1789. The plates were then acquired by publisher John Boydell and sold again, at the Boydell bankruptcy sale in 1818 to Baldwin & Cradock who began selling prints from 1820. Noted engraver James Heath was employed to strengthen some of the engraved lines and this final issue of 1822 is the last to use Hogarth's original engraved plates.
This plate represents the election procession in the yard of the Old Angel Inn. The flag in the background is inscribed "No Old Baby" (the cry used by opponents of Jacobite sympathiser John Child Tylney) and was probably published in the 1822 edition The Works of William Hogarth, from the Original Plates restored by James Heath…London: Printed for Baldwin & Cradock, Paternoster Row, by G.Woodall, Angel Court, Skinn Street.
The plate is cut from the page but has margins around the plate edge over 5mm.