这是一个战争（大部分）与和平（偶尔）、极度富有与极度贫困、贪婪与饥荒、崇高与虚伪并存的世纪，是一个知识、社会、宗教动荡的世纪。在这巨大动荡中，英国伟大画家、版画家、讽刺作家、社会评论家威廉·荷加斯（William Hogarth）诞生了。散文家、诗人查尔斯·兰姆（Charles Lamb）曾这样评价他：“其他画我们只是看，而他的画需要读”。

本书以全新视角展出了荷加斯与同时代欧洲艺术家的绘画作品，他们之间互相影响，华托、夏尔丹、特罗斯特、朗希等艺术家在绘画现代生活时，从荷加斯那里获得了灵感。荷加斯不仅是英国艺术史上的关键人物，而且也是重要的欧洲艺术家。本书还讲述了关于伦敦、巴黎、威尼斯、阿姆斯特丹的故事，这些城市在那个时期的地图上都有体现。城市生活、社会抗议、性、讽刺等主题在荷加斯及其同时代人的艺术作品中表现得淋漓尽致，今天也是如此。

It was a century of war (mostly) and peace (occasionally), of extraordinary wealth and grinding poverty, gargantuan appetites and desperate famines, high ideals and hypocrisy, a century of intellectual, social and religious turmoil. In this fertile turbulence flourished one of Britain’s greatest artists: painter, printmaker, satirist, and social critic William Hogarth, of whom the essayist and poet Charles Lamb once said, ‘Other pictures we look at; his pictures we read’.

Illustrating the full range of Hogarth’s most important paintings and prints, this book shows them in a new light, juxtaposed with work by major European contemporaries who influenced him or took their inspiration from him in their painting of modern life – including Watteau, Chardin, Troost and Longhi. Hogarth is revealed not only as a key figure in British art history, but also as a major European artist. It is also a tale of four cities: Lon don, Paris, Venice and Amsterdam, represented in maps from the period. The themes of city life, social protest, sexuality and satire which come to the fore in the art of Hogarth and his contemporaries are very much live today.