The  Perfection  of  Brutality

Hogarth, William (1697 London 1764). The Murder in the Churchyard. The cab driver Tom Nero became a highwayman who got his sweetheart to a shabby robbery at her mistress. But already tired of the seduced and her pangs of conscience he has exempted himself from her on the nightly churchyard. But the atrocious murder is observed and Tom is overwhelmed and bound by the neighbours armed with sticks and dung forks. Engraving. Inscribed: Published according to Act of Parliament Feb. 1. 1751. / Design’d by W. Hogarth. 38.8 x 32.3 cm.

The Four Stages of Cruelty III. – With 12lined subtext in three verses by supposedly Rev. James Townley:

“ To lawless Love when once betray’d, / Soon Crime to Crime succeeds:
At length beguil’d to Theft, the Maid / By her Beguiler bleeds.

Yet learn seducing Man! nor Night, / With all its sable Cloud,
Can screen the guilty Deed from sight; / Foul Murder cries aloud.

The gaping Wounds, and blood stain’d steel, / Now shock his trembling Soul
But Oh! what Pangs his Breast must feel, / When Death his Knell shell toll. ”

The  famous  sujet  by which Hogarth confronted a brutalization beginning in early youth with a “Restrain the beginnings!”. Thus the acting earthly justice will first bring Tom Nero, the arch-rogue of this set, on the gallows, then into the anatomic theatre. The latter due to common prejudices of especially deterring effect.

Harmonic impression, perhaps from the complete edition published by Boydell 1790-1809. – Some backed small tears in the broad white and a waterstreak in the upper left corner.
Offer no. 7,812 / EUR  187. (c. US$ 261.) + shipping

– – The same. 38.8 x 32.3 cm. – Deep impression from the plate reworked by the Royal engraver James Heath (1757 London 1834) about 1822.
Offer no. 14,409 / EUR  187. (c. US$ 261.) + shipping

– – The same. Steel engraving. C. 1850. Inscribed. 15.8 x 12.2 cm.
Offer no. 7,813 / EUR  25. (c. US$ 35.) + shipping

Complete copies of the set and further single plates available .