Canvassing for Votes (Four Prints of an Election, plate 2), 1757

William Hogarth (1697 - 1764)

RA Collection: Art

Engraving after the second of William Hogarth's paintings The Humours of an Election (1754-5), his last painted cycle responding to current affairs. The paintings are now in Sir John Soane's Museum, London, alongside another of Hogarth's celebrated cycles, A Rake's Progress.

The Humours of an Election was inspired by the notorious Oxfordshire election of 1754, in which the Whigs decided to challenge the Tory stronghold of Oxford by contesting the election, leading to a disputed result and Parliament deciding on the winner (the Whig majority in the House of Commons backing their own candidate). Hogarth depicts the four 'humours' of an election, with this scene showing candidtates gathering support in the countryside. The Tory candidate, on the right outside the Tory inn 'The Royal Oak', purchases trinkets from a Jewish pedlar while looking ath the two ladies on an upstairs balcony. In the background is the rival Whig establishment the Crown, which also serves as a temporary tax office- a rioting mob is trying to pull down the tax office sign. The Portobello inn on the left represents the independent vote.

Hogarth dedicated this print (which he published but did not engrave) to Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (1708-59), diplomat and satirist.