Standing as one of his most personal, satirical and artistically innovative series, David Hockney’s 1963 A Rake’s Progress infuses the artist’s quintessential dry wit into a traditional tale of dismal despondency. An inspired foray into etching, the work is Hockney’s first major print series and offers rare insight into his introspective, open and honest creative process that takes the viewer on a journey of personal self-discovery. 

Daring debasement: the influence of William Hogarth 

Delving into the depths of historical source imagery, Hockney’s sixteen-part series is a graphic reinterpretation of William Hogarth’s 1735 engravings, a “modern moral subject” popular at the time with the English bourgeoise. Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress follows Tom Rakewall – “rake” denoting an eighteenth-century term for a man of loose morals – who comes into inheritance and enters fashionable London life before succumbing to financial ruin. In the first plate the rake is depicted in modest chambers, being measured for a mourning suit while a lawyer makes note of his deceased father’s possessions. The inevitable downfall of the rake is subtly alluded to by his offering to pay off a tearful pregnant girl whom he promised to marry. Presenting a meagre handful of coins to her irate mother, his aloof, dismissive demeanor is developed throughout the series to a more overt display of avarice and corruption. He surrounds himself with a cast of deceitful characters ranging from prostitutes, hags and prisoners, before finding his measly demise in the infamous Bedlam asylum. The rake’s decadent lifestyle – indulging in excessive gambling and sexual escapades – bode as a warning to England’s emerging middle-class audience whom, having exploited the expanding open market, hoped that they too could live like rogue aristocrats.

 

Hockney’s refinement departs starkly from Hogarth’s saturated scenes of chaotic realism, evoking instead abstracted figures complimented by bold plumes of arresting red ink. Although at first glance the series may appear as a spontaneous, diaristic exercise, Hockney devoted considerable time to refining its evolution, distilling the compositions over an eighteen-month period to achieve a notable cohesion in colour, clarity and form. The outlined figures offset the blackened aquatint contrasts while empty space balances areas of intense imagery, creating a visual harmony throughout the narrative journey. Most significantly, Hogarth’s rake is supplanted by a Hockney doppelganger sporting bleached hair and oversized circular glasses, a comical reference to the artist’s own appearance. Although Hockney attested, “It is not really me. It’s just that I use myself as a model because I’m always around”, the prints are largely inspired by Hockney’s travels to New York in the summer of 1961. The character is as instantly recognisible as he is a generic archetype for a disorientated, wide-eyed English tourist – not dissimilar to Hockney’s own experience of the States. 

 

An Englishman abroad

On 9 July 1961, Hockney flew to New York for the first time. It was his 24th birthday. The trip was financed partly by the sale of several paintings and partly by an unexpected £100 prize won at a print competition soon after graduating from the Royal College of Art. Hockney had fantasied about New York since childhood when the “New York Road” was displayed on the Leeds tram, and more recently, after looking at Mark Berger’s Physique Pictorial magazines. A radical pacifist vegetarian armed with a selection of prints to show at the Museum of Modern Art, Hockney was struck by the “sheer energy of the place” and immediately extended his stay by a few months. It was the liberalism of New York that also afforded Hockney the space to dramatically change his appearance. During a commercial break the artist serendipitously saw an advertisement for Lady Clairol hair dye, with the catchphrase, “Is it true blondes have more fun?” To Hockney, the American image was football players and blondes, and so that evening he decided to bleach his hair peroxide white – a distinctive look he kept for the remainder of his career . 
“It was amazingly sexy, and unbelievably easy. People were much more open, and I felt completely free.”
—David HockneyIn A Rake’s Progress, the semi-autobiographical narrative begins with Hockney’s protagonist arriving with a briefcase to a city of skyscrapers and is subsequently met by William S. Lieberman, the then Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art. In reality, Lieberman was so impressed by Hockney’s early etchings he sent the young artist to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, one of America’s leading undergraduate art colleges. In between studying, Hockney navigated Madison Square gardens and Harlem bars, purchasing five-buck whisky while seeing gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and her choir performing. “It was pure Americana”, he recalled, these personal memories subsequently informing the visual material for the series. As Hockney’s protagonist eventually descends a metaphorical staircase – having fallen out with “the good people” after his wallet runs dry – he is expunged from affluent society and finds himself in the same notorious Bedlam asylum as Hogarth’s corrupted rake. However, Hockney was less concerned with a direct narrative comparison than exploring a young meritocrat engulfed by sixties Americana. The dogmatic Christian morality embedded in Hogarth’s story is usurped by Hockney’s liberated exploration of individual identity. Laden with allusions of gay erotica, salacious late-night drinking and criminal antics, Hockney reimagined the follies of high and low life in eighteenth century London as a tale of a young gay man trying to find his place in 1960s New York.
“One thing that struck me in New York was that in the Bowery you did see bums on the street, which you didn’t see in London at that time, and of course that was perfect for The Rake’s Progress.”
—David Hockney

Hockney and printmaking

While at the Pratt Institute, Hockney probed notions of individuality, consumer culture and Anglo-American identity – thematic concerns that harboured in his mind since first arriving in New York. Meditating on these feelings, he set to work on his seminal print My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean (1961–2) that provided a stylistic and thematic framework for the rake series. Juxtaposing a traditional British folk song from which the title takes its name with a proclamation of American independence, the deliberately empty space between the two countries alludes to Hockney’s personal nostalgia for “bonnie” Britian as he embraced the excitement of New York, drawn equally between the opposing forces. While exploring printmaking at the Pratt Institute, Hockney’s interest in the medium intensified as he began to discover its power as a means of expression. Previously at the Royal College, he would sell his prints for two or three pounds, with no edition number and in pretty grubby condition – often covered in footmarks from where they were lying on the studio floor. However, his new impassioned energy and recent positive reception of his early prints shifted his attitude towards the medium as he realised it could indeed be something valuable; not only monetarily but as an artistic tool for expression. It is no coincidence, therefore, that Hockney looked to Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress – one of the most famous etching series ever produced by an artist – for his first major multi-plate foray into etching; a medium that would remain central to his artistic practice for the remainder of his long career.

 

“What I liked was telling a story just visually. Hogarth's original story has no words, it's a graphic tale. You have to interpret it all. So I thought, this is what I will do.”
—David Hockney Witnessing several other modern adaptions of A Rake’s Progress – notably Stravinsky’s 1951 modern operatic theatre production, for which Hockney would later produce a dazzling set and costume design for – may have inspired confidence in Hockney’s departure from the narrative structure and visual iconography of the traditional tale. Using Hogarth as a springboard for a personal variation, the series afforded Hockney a level of introspection as he processed all that he experienced on his formative trip to New York. In this way, the series is as much about self-discovery as it is an homage to Hogarth’s epic sequence. Hockney’s A Rake’s Progress is nothing less than an artefact celebrating his singular artistic identity that has defined a generation of British artists.