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McKenzie Sullivan The artist William Hogarth (1697-1764), was at the heart of London's eighteenth-century public life, and had intense opinions about it, which were expressed not only in his images but also in his legal lobbying. According to the account on the experiences Hogarth's life, he very commercial in his approach to the sale of his prints, advertising them in the London papers and always looking for ways to maximize his returns. An essential part of securing these returns was the introduction of a copyright bill, which Hogarth devised in association with other young artists in 1735. At the time, piracy was rampant. Mass reproduction of an artist's original etchings, engravings and prints were cheap and profitable. Print sellers dominated the art market, as there were few other outlets for artists to sell their work. Print sellers began to mass-produce reproductions of the original work. Hogarth experienced personal loss from these factors, which led him to become one of the most vocal proponents for the inauguration of copyright laws for artworks. In Hogarth's early work he was keen to idealize the social variety and exuberance that he saw as the best signs of British liberty; and he fought hard against the establishment of the Royal Academy of Art which would represent a state take-over of the existing public academies run by the artists themselves. Though he eventually secured a court position and painted official pictures of royal events, Hogarth remained always confident in the expression of his middle-class self. This is evident in his painting of Captain Thomas Coram (1740) who was a self-made sailor, entrepreneur and philanthropist who Hogarth depicted endearingly uncomfortable in the aristocratic settings of the painting thus poking fun at the upper class. Hogarth was also passionately concerned with improvement of the poor. His works brought public attention to the plight of the poor in London. Two of Hogarth's most famous works, "Beer Street" and "Gin Lane", depict the satire of London life seen in Beer Street (wealthy young men drunken and pawing prostitutes), which is made to seem positively healthy and desirable in the light of the scourge of gin. These were years of turmoil in London, with large-scale immigration, mass poverty, high rates of violent crime, and, like many others of his day, Hogarth wondered how this underclass could become domesticated and made to serve the righteous interests of the nation. The legal basis to Hogarth's success was the Copyright Act of 1735. Hogarth's mission was to defend the rights and property of British artists. He had decided to petition Parliament for an Act that would give designers and engravers the same statutory copyright that authors had won in 1709. Hogarth proposed a Bill that would give them an exclusive right to their work for fourteen years from the time of publication. This would not only mean that they retained the financial rewards now scammed by the print sellers, but it would also establish a different meaning of ownership of works of art; the engraver could legally 'own' the property produced by his labor. This meant that fine prints could retain their integrity and no longer be cheapened by poor copies. Hogarth put forward his argument in an open letter to a Member of Parliament. He blamed print sellers, who capitalized on the labor of the poor engravers, working day and night at miserable prices. Hogarth was not thinking merely of himself but of the problems facing all engravers; the poorer workers who had no shop or studio to show their prints and had to be reliant on the unjust print sellers. Hogarth's open letter made a case for the importance of copyright as a general good, not just an individual benefit. He argued that good-quality prints would raise the artists' reputations, and higher standards of reproduction. Hogarth also argued that copyright would improve the status of British art in general as more people would enter the engraving trade knowing they could profit from their art. This would create a large surge of artwork flooding into the market, providing a greater amount of work for the public to purchase and choose from. A booming art market would even benefit print sellers. Although 'Hogarth's Act' did prove to have certain weaknesses, he not only stopped piracies but also improved British engraving. The final variation of the Act extended a copyright to fourteen years and charged a fine for every copied product that was discovered. The act had lasting repercussions throughout the art market and helped legitimize art as a product that was of economic value and was the private property of its creator. Links to Hogarth's Work: "Captain Thomas Coram" (1740) <http://join2day.com/abc/H/hogarth/hogarth47.JPG> "Beer Street" and "Gin Lane" (both 1751) <http://www.michaelfinney.co.uk/uploads/images/catalogue/1415_BeerStreet%26GinLane000001_1000.jpg> |
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Elena Cestero Renowned painter and engraver William Hogarth's actions led to the Engraver's or Hogarth's Act which was based on British literary copyright law and outlawed copies of works of art for fourteen years (this was later doubled to twenty-eight years) and established laws concerning, "the evil of copying, the evils of the printseller, and the artist's right to his property." Hogarth was very effective in marketing and promoting his work through advertising subscriptions in newspapers. He began doing this, "in order to preserve property therein and prevent the print sellers," from profiting so largely from unauthorized copies. The result was the creation of a market without a middleman. This moved the market away from patronage towards the self-promotion and control by the artist. While this strategy was successful in Hogarth's promotion of his work, it did not prevent piracy, and copies of his work appeared frequently as prints and on other products including snuffboxes and mugs. Hogarth's work was highly copied and reproduced which caused the value of his work to decrease as he was forced to sell at lower prices to compete with the forgeries. This decline in value and loss of control by the artist tends to be the general effect of fakes and forgeries on the market. Examples of the issues of copying affecting Hogarth's works include his "Beggar's Opera" of which there are several versions of paintings some of which may not even be Hogarth's , and the delayed release of "A Rake's Progress" in order to wait for the passage of the Engraver's Act. The variety of art that Hogarth created was interesting. He seemed to be aiming at a much broader audience than we have previously seen as his work included both "high and low" subjects ranging from royals to murderers. His styles of art and marketing were influential throughout Europe. Hogarth's appeal to Parliament emphasized genuine versus imitation art and art as an extension of the artist. He also insisted that the effects of copyright laws would lead to "improvement of the arts" by increasing the number of artists and high quality works. Parliament agreed and approved the act. This act provided the base from which we derive contemporary copyright law and has helped provide artists for centuries with the tools to better control, protect, and defend their work, the form of its marketing, and value. Recent examples of artists invoking copyright law abound in the art, music, and film industries such as photographer David LaChapelle's recent lawsuit against singer Rihanna that accused her of plagiarizing some of his images in a music video. |
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Kelly Zona Hogarth was one of the most well received artists of his time in eighteenth century England and because of this was plagued by a following of copy artists who damaged his ability to profit from his own work. Eventually, the Engraver's Act, (which because of his extensive efforts would become known as the Hogarth Act), created one of the first copyright laws to protect artists rights, and began to shape the basis for the modern art market. Hogarth was in a unique position, he was not only a painter, but also an engraver, distributer, and advertiser of his own works. He was therefore able to cut out the middlemen of engravers and print-sellers (Paulson, 36). However, this put the extra burden on him to reproduce mass quantities of his works and sell them himself. He continually lost profits to cheap copies of his engravings sold at much lower prices. Initial attempts to circumvent plagiarism involved selling his engravings in sets of "limited editions" to patrons with subscriptions (Paulson, 36). However, he was constrained from further profiting off of his own works when he reached the limit of engravings he had set fourth. Paradoxically, his strategy to remain profitable in the art market limited his right to his own property. One of the issues Hogarth grappled with was the "analogy between the emulation of upper-class behavior and the copying of art: both are based on the assumption that the copy is as good as the original" (Paulson, 36). He brought this issue to light through satire in perhaps his best known work, The Beggar's Opera of 1728 (Simon, 257). Hogarth afterward produced a series of paintings depicting his "opera," thought the legitimacy of one of the paintings is questionable. Many of its details are not consistent with the other paintings, such as personal characteristics of the subjects, stylistic inconsistencies, and the handling of the paint itself (Simon, 259). One speculation is that this painting was commissioned to an anonymous artist by the owner of the New Theater in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which had produced The Beggar's Opera (Simon, 268). Either way, Hogarth wanted to protect his own interests and his copyright law was in the works. Hogarth began to form his own act on the basis on the Literary Copyright Act of 1709, which gave copyrights to owners for twenty-one years, and copiers would have to pay fines if caught (Paulson, 37). He cited this act in an initial pamphlet, and included his thoughts on the need for "Improvement of the Arts" in England, which prescribed giving power back to the artists through copyright law, allowing them to profit without fear of copiers, and to give them leverage with print-sellers (Paulson, 37). Hogarth's proposed solution was to pass a law "against one artists copying the designs of another. By "copying" is meant a shape-for-shape, distance-for-distance, part-for-part reproduction" (Paulson, 37). Soon after this pamphlet, Hogarth, along with a few others, petitioned Parliament. The committee approved and ordered that, "leave be given to bring in a Bill for the Encouragement of the Arts of designing, engraving, and etching, historical and other Prints, by vesting the Properties thereof in the Inventors and Engravers, during the Time therein to be mentioned" (Paulson, 40). The act ensured artists rights to their works for fourteen years, and was to go into effect on June 25th 1735 At that time Hogarth decided to delay the publication of his latest work for fear of copying. However, a print-seller sent copy artists to Hogarth's residence under the guise of interested patrons, and copies of the work were available for sale before the newly formed Engraver's Act went into effect (Paulson, 42). In a genius move to compete with the knock offs, Hogarth permitted his originals to be copied by an approved engraver and sold those copies at a competitive price (Paulson, 43). Thus the new market strategy was to sell original works at a higher price with subscription, and at a lower price "with the usual allowance" to print dealers (Paulson, 44). The passing of Hogarth's Act as well as Hogarth's ingenious strategies of advertising, allowed for the replacement of personal patronage and helped to bring about the emergence of the modern art market in Britain.
While the modern day creative arts market has developed more complex and experimental modes of interaction between artists and their audiences, the basic copyright issues and the marketing techniques that Hogarth developed are continuing to evolve and shape the market today. Bibliography: Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth: High Art and Low. Simon, Robin. Hogarth, France, and British Art: The Rise of the Arts in 18th-Century Britain.
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Jacqueline Park |
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Tadd Phillips |
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