PUBLISHED TO ACCOMPANY THE MAJOR EXHIBITION AT DERBY MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY 2023

Hogarth’s Britons explores how the English painter and graphic satirist William Hogarth (1697–1764) set out to define British nationhood and identity at a time of division at home and conflict abroad. With notions of community cohesion, good citizenship and patriotism, wrapped up in a unifying idea of British national character and spirit in all its variety, and set alongside the ongoing national debate on Britain’s past, present and future within European and World affairs, Hogarth and his art has never been more relevant.

In the summer of 1745, Prince Charles Edward Stuart ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ landed with his supporters, the ‘Jacobites’, in a remote corner of Scotland. This signalled the start of his audacious military campaign, with the backing of Britain’s global adversary France and during a Europe-wide war, to topple the Hanoverian, Protestant monarch George II and restore the Catholic Stuarts, exiled in France and then Rome since 1688, to the throne. The country descended into turmoil, with regional, local and family loyalty for these rival royal dynasties severely tested, and opposing visions for the new nation of Great Britain – since the Union of England and Scotland in 1707 – laid bare. By early December the prince and his 6,000 troops arrived in Derby, just 120 miles and five days’ march from London. For both sides everything was at stake.

From the 1720s, through the crises of the early 1740s, to the civil war called the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion or Rising, Prince Charles’s defeat at Culloden in April 1746 and beyond, Hogarth created some of the most iconic images in British and European art, including Marriage A-La-Mode, O the Roast Beef of Old England (The Gate of Calais) and The March of the Guards to Finchley. Through such vibrant scenes, rich in topical commentary, he conveyed a sense of external threat (real and imagined) from foreign powers and internal political, social and cultural upheaval. At the same time he offered his fellow Britons a confident, reassuring idea of the rights and liberties they enjoyed under King George and his government: a flawed status quo, as Hogarth would readily admit, yet certainly better, he would argue, than the regime that would replace it under the ‘popish’ Stuarts as client monarchs of the self-serving French king, Louis XV.

With British society and politics in flux, and the Union between Scotland and England arguably more vulnerable now than at any moment since 1746, the themes explored in Hogarth’s Britons have profound resonance with our own time.

On Thurs 18 Oct 6.30-8.30 pm join me in conversation with Jim White at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, sponsored by Blackwell’s Manchester. Book tickets here.

On Fri 2 Nov join me in conversation with Professor Jon Mee at the University of York. Details tbc.

On Sat 3 Nov join me and Professor Jon Mee (University of York) for a Peterloo post-screening Q&A at City Screen, York. Screening 12 midday, Q&A c. 2.30 pm. Full details tbc.

On Fri 7 Dec join me and Mike Leigh for a Peterloo post-screening panel discussion at the Curzon Soho. Part of the London History Festival, details tbc.

“Highmore’s works include many paintings showing his sympathetic approach to the plight of powerless women … [This is] the first major publication of his work.” The Guardian

“[Basic Instincts] brings Joseph Highmore out of the shadows.” Apollo Magazine

“Highmore (1692–1780) was much more than just a society painter … his connection with the Foundling Hospital alerted him to the inequalities and injustices of his time and to the plight of women and children at the mercy of men who always held the keys … The Angel of Mercy still has the power to shock and, sadly, tells a very modern story.” Kate Chisholm The Spectator

“[Basic Instincts] lifts the veil on the darker aspects of love and sex in Georgian London … this is the first major exhibition of Highmore’s work for more than 50 years and it brings the artist out of the shadow of William Hogarth … In Highmore’s hands, character never slides into caricature.” Caroline Bugler Country Life 

“Jacqueline Riding has written a thoughtful book … [she] convincingly argues that the progress of the children in the [Foundling] hospital’s care is reflected in the subjects of the four large paintings by Highmore, James Wills, Francis Hayman and Hogarth that decorate the Court Room. Her insights are a major contribution to our understanding of this important and influential decorative scheme … [Basic Instincts] is an enlightening show, and proves that Highmore is worthy of a new monographic exhibition.” Hugh Belsey The Burlington Magazine

“This is a deeply satisfying book at many levels. It is a model for rethinking what a traditional monographic approach might look like … By the conclusion … most readers will have learned something more about the world of painting in London from the 1720s to the 1740s, and a lot more about an artist who is only now receiving his due. Riding’s treatment of the prints for Pamela is masterful … “[she] offers a compelling account of a “unified and dominant narrative,” uniting the four paintings in the Governors’ Court Room … Her proposal deserves serious engagement … With all of this material in place, Riding finally turns her attention to The Angel of Mercy directly in the closing pages, and this singular painting now seems less like an affront and more like a remarkably daring experiment. Riding cleverly brings the painting into conversation with Highmore’s Hagar and Ishmael and with larger conceptions of virtue, providence, and divine deliverance.” Craig Hanson Journal18

“It is the commonality between high and low that Basic Instincts reveals so well. We aren’t as divided as we think. Highmore scratches away at the veneer of respectability that coats the art of his age, and finds darkness beneath. Regardless of position, everyone has the same capacity for bad behaviour. And unfortunately, as Highmore shows, all too often women bore the brunt of this behaviour.” Rake’s Digress

“The protagonist of The Angel of Mercy is one of the many women painted by portraitist Joseph Highmore, the artist that, with his powerful art, brought feminine vulnerability to the canvas, as well as exploring the attitudes during the Georgian era towards love, sexuality and desire … But Joseph Highmore … was also a painter of tender portraits, depicting mothers, friends, children and relatives, a testimony to his versatile talent.” Samantha De Martin ARTE.it

Proud to announce the arrival of my latest book, Basic Instincts: Love, Passion and Violence in the Art of Joseph Highmore, Paul Holberton Publishing, September 2017, published to accompany the Foundling Museum’s current major exhibition 29 Sept 2017 – 7 Jan 2018 (details below). You can order Basic Instincts here.

Jacobites paperback is now out! Order it here at a 20% discount.

Buy now at Amazon 

Reviews for Jacobites USA:

“[Riding] unflinchingly describes the consequences for those who supported the rebellion. The use of contemporary accounts, especially from women, offers a different and compelling perspective to events, resulting in a persuasive work geared toward 21st-century readers. Even-handed, refreshingly free of jargon, and organized into short, succinct chapters focused on geographic location that make the book read like a thoroughly researched adventure story, this work will appeal to the lay reader while also being an ideal resource for a Scottish history course.” – starred review, Library Journal

“[Riding] maintains objectivity . . . making this work unusual among the many passionate and patriotism-tinged treatments of the oft-romanticized prince . . . Throughout, Riding seamlessly incorporates journal entries, letters, and other primary sources [and] effectively shows why Bonnie Prince Charlie’s once-great hopes . . . continue to inspire the romanticization of his legend centuries later.” – Publishers Weekly

“Given the popular sentimentality of her subject Jacqueline Riding achieves a remarkable feat in producing a history which is both compulsively readable and factually packed. Having brilliantly toured the political situation of mid eighteenth-century Western Europe, she takes us along on the political (and then military) campaign trail with the Young Pretender. But the triumph of Riding’s new account of the 1745 rebellion is that, as we move from Rome, through Paris, to Scotland and England, we are taken grippingly from romance to comedy, and even high farce, before the eventual tragedy.” – Catholic Herald

“Jacqueline Riding’s Jacobites brilliantly captures the extraordinary daring of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s ’45, and takes us step-by-step to the final disaster at Culloden. This is the definitive modern account of the Jacobite Rising.” – George Goodwin, author of Benjamin Franklin in London (Yale 2016)