William Hogarth FRSA (10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects". He is perhaps best known for his series A Harlot's Progress, A Rake's Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode. Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian".

Hogarth was born in London to a lower-middle-class family. In his youth he took up an apprenticeship with an engraver, but did not complete the apprenticeship. His father underwent periods of mixed fortune, and was at one time imprisoned in lieu of outstanding debts, an event that is thought to have informed William's paintings and prints with a hard edge.

Influenced by French and Italian painting and engraving, Hogarth's works are mostly satirical caricatures, sometimes bawdily sexual, mostly of the first rank of realistic portraiture. They became widely popular and mass-produced via prints in his lifetime, and he was by far the most significant English artist of his generation. Charles Lamb deemed Hogarth's images to be books, filled with "the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of words. Other pictures we look at; his pictures we read

Grignion, Charles (1717-1810)

GRIGNION or GRIGNON, CHARLES (1717–1810), line-engraver, born in Russell Street, Covent Garden, on 25 Oct. 1717, was son of a foreigner and apparently a brother of Thomas Grignion, a well-known watchmaker in that street. He studied as a boy under Hubert François Gravelot [q. v.], and at the age of sixteen went to work under J. P. Le Bas in Paris, where he remained six months. He then returned to London, resumed work under Gravelot and later under G. Scotin, and about 1738 commenced work as an engraver on his own account. Being an excellent artist, combining good draughtsmanship and purity of line, Grignion obtained plenty of employment from the booksellers, and devoted himself to illustrating books, chiefly from the designs of Gravelot, F. Hayman, S. Wale, and J. H. Mortimer. He engraved the early designs of Stothard for Bell's ‘Poets.’ Among his important works were the plates to Albinus's ‘Anatomy,’ published by Knapton in 1757; some of Dalton's ‘Antique Statues;’ ‘Caractacus before the Emperor Claudius at Rome,’ after Hayman; the frontispiece to Smollett's ‘History of England’ (exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1761); ‘Phryne and Zenocrates,’ after Salvator Rosa; plates to Walpole's ‘Anecdotes of Painting;’ various portraits; landscapes after J. F. Barralet, W. Bellers, A. Heckel, and others. Hogarth thought so highly of Grignion that he employed him to work in his own house on his ‘Canvassing for Votes’ (plate ii. of ‘Four Prints of an Election,’ published in 1757), on his ‘Garrick as Richard III,’ his frontispiece and tailpiece to the Society of Artists' Catalogue, 1761, and other plates. Grignion lived for many years in James Street, Covent Garden, but for the last few years of his life resided in Kentish Town. His school of engraving was gradually superseded by the stronger school of Woollett and his followers, and Grignion, after fifty years of useful labour, found his profession insufficient to support himself and his family. In his ninetieth year a subscription was raised for his support, and he lived on charity till 1 Nov. 1810, when he died at his house in Kentish Town in his ninety-fourth year. He was buried in the church of St. John the Baptist, Kentish Town, beside his only son, who had died before him. A portrait of him in his ninety-second year was drawn by T. Uwins, R.A., for Charles Warren, the engraver, who wrote a biography of Grignion on the back; it is now in the print room at the British Museum, where there is also a pencil drawing by Grignion of Captain Richard Tyrell. Grignion was a fellow of the Society of Artists, and one of the committee appointed to form a royal academy. The destitution to which he was reduced was one of the causes which led to the foundation of the Artists' Benevolent Fund.