"The Fellow Apprentices at their Looms." Industry and Idleness, I-- William Hogarth (1697-1764) (original) (raw)

The Fellow Apprentices at their Looms from Industry and Idleness, I. William Hogarth (1697-1764). 1747. 10 3/16 x 13 3/8 inches.

Scriptural Texts on ornate shields beneath main image: (beneath apprentice at left) Proverbs chapter 23 verse 21: "The Drunkard shall come to Poverty & drowsiness shall cloath a Man [in] Rags." (beneath apprentice at right): Proverbs chapter 10 verse 4: "The hand of the diligent maketh rich."

Other Texts within the picture space

• The engraving with the texts enlarged
• Over the good apprentice's head: the rules of apprenticeship
• Over the good apprentice's head: Tale of Dick Wittington, who become Lord Mayor of London, (a popular tale that prefigures the success of the good apprentice)
• Over the bad apprentice's head: pages from Defoe's Moll Flanders, tale of a prostitute
• Near the good apprentice's loom: The Prentices Guide in good shape
• Near the bad apprentice's loom: a tattered copy of The Prentices Guide
• Near the bad apprentice's loom: a beer mug with the words "Spittle Fields"

Perhaps Spittle Fields plays on Spittal Fields, the East London section that had much textile manufacturing, or, less likely, a reference to Spitalfields (a contraction of Hospital Fields), possibly the place the bad apprentice's body goes to be dissected after his hanging.

Bibliography

Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth: His Life, Art and Times, 2 vols. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1971.

Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth's Graphic Works. revised edition. 2 vols. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970.

Last modified 9 October 2007