genre paintings, such as the latter’s An English Family at Tea (c.1720; see Solkin, 1993, 67), which took
seriously both the wealth and the virtue of those who had commissioned their works. Hogarth’s satirical
series presented an opportunity for more independent comment. His unusually independent status within
the art market meant that he was able to satirize the pretensions of wealth, particularly the aping of foreign
fashions, in narrative series such as Marriage àlaMode . Ironically, he marketed such series in both
popular and luxury (framed) editions (Donald, 1996, 78–85; Riding, 2006d, 141–142). Women were
often blamed for an unhealthy consumption of luxury goods (Donald, 1996, 78–80; Brewer, 1997, 81;
Perry, 2007, 189).They were held responsible, for example, for encouraging others to peer into – and
perhaps purchase from – print shop windows exhibiting “impure” images, thereby posing a threat to the
realms of “higher,” genteel taste (Brewer, 1997, 76). Their obsession with fashion was also blamed for
making men effeminate and undermining more “natural” values (Donald, 1996, 86–89; Kriz, 2001, 60).
Attitudes to wealth and luxury varied in accordance with national economics and politics. Hogarth’s 1721
print The South Sea Scheme offers critical comment on a recent public–private initiative in Britain, the
foundation in 1711 of the South Sea Company, which traded in stock that was intended to help reduce the
national debt. After rising in value, the stock rapidly declined, however, thus creating a “bubble” effect
that was to prompt suspicion on a massive scale of financial speculation, corruption or gambling of all
kinds (Craske, 2000, 44–45; Walcot, 2012, 413–432). Like many other eighteenthcentury artists and
thinkers, Hogarth preferred more moderate wealth built on solid foundations. In France, prior to and
during the Revolution, debates about luxury coincided with those on the need to regenerate society
(Wrigley, 1993, 204–206). Meanwhile in Britain, French fashions were both a source of desire and
symbols of the political bondage or corrupt court behavior of their nation of origin (Donald, 1996, 81).
Resistance to such trends was particularly marked in rural areas, which popular prints often represented
as at risk of pollution by “city ways” (Donald, 1996, 82–83).
Important shifts in attitude occurred. Across Europe, toward the end of the century, it became more
acceptable to separate the realms of art and taste from those of politics and public morality, as
conceptions of an autonomous subjectivity in matters of taste became more common due to the
development of a diversified, marketled culture. As a wider public engaged with art, so the language of
selfdenial became less important and it became more acceptable for private individuals to enjoy some
of the more sensuous and delicate effects of art: this development allowed Benjamin West, for example, to
draw freely on the coloristic and sensuous brushwork effects of artists such as Titian and Correggio
(Solkin, 1993, 181–97). In the aftermath of the French Revolution, leisure and entertainment industries
revived, so that aesthetic, rather than political, critiques of art and fashion became more common
(Donald, 1996, 89–108). This separation of the realms of the aesthetic and the ethical was among the
issues examined by Kant. He developed the views of Baumgarten (Kaufman, 1995, 449–458; and see
Chapter 4), who saw a sense of the beautiful in art (as opposed to nature) as separate from the concerns of
morality:
Now I am quite willing to concede that an interest in the beautiful in art (in which I include the artistic
use of natural beauties for our adornment, and hence for vanity’s sake) provides no proof whatever that
[someone’s] way of thinking is attached to the morally good, or even inclined toward it.
(Critique of Judgment, 1790, in Kant, 1987 [1790], 165)This separation of the ethical and the aesthetic had been at most a sporadic or implicit undercurrent
earlier in the century, particularly at the height of the fashion for the rococo. For example, the sensuous
and successful appeal of the works of artists such as Watteau, Fragonard and Boucher had claimed few
moral or didactic aims (Crow, 1985, 70; Wrigley, 1993, 280; Plax, 2000, 81; Barker, 2005, 119; Michel,
2007, 286). Even art that represented more humble or restrained moments of contemporary life, such as