Plate one, from A Harlot's Progress

Museum record 20609: Plate one, from A Harlot's Progress by William Hogarth. A verified entry point for discovery.

What to notice

For Plate one, from A Harlot's Progress (record 20609), start with modern, expressive, atmospheric. Compare the focal subject, edge treatment, and atmosphere before moving on.

Discover

Hogarth engraved these six copper plates (1964.254–59) with a burin, a sharp metal tool used to incise swelling lines directly into a flattened copper surface. He worked in reverse of the final printed images, which were produced by inking the plates and running them through a roller press with dampened sheets of paper on top. The small cross at the bottom of each plate was added when Hogarth issued the second state, released over a decade after the first, much copied edition. The prints on view nearby a…