Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme
Encyclopedia
Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme (also known as The South Sea Scheme) is an early print by William Hogarth
, created in 1721 and widely published from 1724. It caricature
s the financial speculation, corruption and credulity that caused the South Sea Bubble in England in 1720–1.
joint stock company
founded in 1711. It was granted a monopoly
to trade with Spain
's South American colonies
as part of a treaty during the War of Spanish Succession, in return for the company's assumption of the national debt run up by England during the war. Speculation in the company's stock led to a great economic bubble
in 1720, with company's shares rising rapidly in price from around £100 to over £1,000. Many investors were ruined when the bubble burst and the value of stock in the South Sea Company crashed. Political scandal ensued when fraud among the company's directors and corruption of cabinet ministers became clear.
The event triggered several satirical
engravings by foreign artists that were widely published in English newspapers, including in particular a version of A Monument Dedicated to Posterity by Bernard Picart
adapted by Bernard Baron
, which depicted Folly drawing Fortune
in a cart while she showered a crowd of hopeful investors with bubbles of air and worthless shreds of paper rather than with the riches for which they hoped. Hogarth's print was created in 1721 as a response to the foreign engravings. The events had personal piquancy for Hogarth, given his father's detention as a debtor in Fleet Prison
from 1707–12 and his early death in 1718. The South Sea Scheme is an early essay in engraving by Hogarth, who had set up on his own as a copperplate artist and painter after his apprenticeship with silver engraver Ellis Gamble came to an early end in 1720.
scene, with the Guildhall
and its monumental statue of the giant Gog
(or Magog) to the left, a classical column based on The Monument
to the Great Fire of London
to the right, and the dome of St Paul's Cathedral
rising behind the buildings in the background. The base of the column bears an inscription which states: "This monument was erected in memory of the destruction of the city by the South Sea in 1720", while foxes fight above. It is no coincidence that in Hogarth's scene the monument, a symbol of the City's greed, dwarves St Paul's, a symbol of Christian charity.
The centre of the print is occupied by a financial wheel of fortune or merry-go-round ridden by figures representative of the broad section of society taken in by the scheme, including a whore and a clergyman on the left, then a boot black and a hag, and a Scottish nobleman to the right, on a fat-faced horse. The ride is surmounted by a goat and the slogan "Who'l Ride" and surrounded by a jostling crowd below. To the front of the crowd, a short pickpocket
rifles through the pockets of a larger gentleman. Paulson identifies the first as a caricature of Alexander Pope
, who profited from the South Sea Scheme; and speculates that the other is John Gay
, who, refusing to cash in enough of his stock to enable himself to have "a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day for life", lost his investment and all his imagined profits. The image of the wheel is a parody of Jacques Callot
's La Pendaison from the series The Miseries and Misfortunes of War
, and the crowd has elements taken from his La Roue. Women line a balcony to the upper left, queuing to enter a building surmounted by stag's antlers
, under a sign which offers "Raffleing for Husbands with Lottery Fortunes In Here".
The satire is accentuated by a series of allegorical figures, identified by letters explained in the verse below. To the left, a blindfolded Fortune hangs by her hair from the balcony of the Guildhall (the devil's shop) while a winged devil cuts off parts of her body with a scythe and throws the bloody chunks into the baying crowd. In the bottom left corner, distinctive clothing identifies a Catholic
, a Jew and a Puritan
, who are ignoring the tumultuous scene to concentrate on their game of chance. To their right, the naked figure of Honesty is broken on the wheel by Self-interest while an Anglican priest looks on; further right, Villainy – who has removed his fair mask which now hangs upside down between his legs – scourges Honour beneath the column. Standing nearby is a monkey (a symbol of mimicry or "aping") who wears a gentleman's sword and a baronial hat
, and wraps himself in Honour's cloak. In the lower right corner, the figure of Trade lies asleep or dead, ignored by all.
Underneath, a verse reads:
Hogarth may have tried to sell copies of the print in 1721, but no advertisements for the issue of the print are known. In 1724, following his unsuccessful attempt to break the printmakers' monopoly by self-publishing his popular print The Bad Taste of the Town (also known as Masquerades and Operas), Hogarth sold his South Sea print, and another 1724 engraving entitled The Lottery, through the printsellers Mrs Chilcott in Westminster Hall and R Caldwell in Newgate Street. Prints were sold for 1 shilling
each. Various states of the print exist; between the first and second state some minor corrections were made, including a change from "And Swarm" to "To Swarm" in the fourth line of the verse, but all other states only change the publication line to reflect a corresponding change in the printseller. The last known state, produced sometime after 1751, has the publication line erased completely. An early sketch, noted in Oppe's catalogue, omits St Paul's, the Guildhall, and various figures on the merry-go-round, shows Honesty as a woman, and has different wording for the inscriptions on the monument and raffle house.
has described Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme as "the one original Bubble print by an English artist". John J. Richetti, in The Cambridge history of English literature, 1660-1780, states that "English graphic satire really begins with Hogarth's Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme".
William Hogarth
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
, created in 1721 and widely published from 1724. It caricature
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...
s the financial speculation, corruption and credulity that caused the South Sea Bubble in England in 1720–1.
Background
The South Sea Company was a BritishKingdom of Great Britain
The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...
joint stock company
Joint stock company
A joint-stock company is a type of corporation or partnership involving two or more individuals that own shares of stock in the company...
founded in 1711. It was granted a monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
to trade with Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
's South American colonies
Spanish colonization of the Americas
Colonial expansion under the Spanish Empire was initiated by the Spanish conquistadores and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Christian faith through indigenous conversions...
as part of a treaty during the War of Spanish Succession, in return for the company's assumption of the national debt run up by England during the war. Speculation in the company's stock led to a great economic bubble
Economic bubble
An economic bubble is "trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values"...
in 1720, with company's shares rising rapidly in price from around £100 to over £1,000. Many investors were ruined when the bubble burst and the value of stock in the South Sea Company crashed. Political scandal ensued when fraud among the company's directors and corruption of cabinet ministers became clear.
The event triggered several satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
engravings by foreign artists that were widely published in English newspapers, including in particular a version of A Monument Dedicated to Posterity by Bernard Picart
Bernard Picart
Bernard Picart , was a French engraver, son of Etienne Picart, also an engraver. He was born in Paris and died in Amsterdam. He moved to Antwerp in 1696, and then spent a year in Amsterdam before returning to France at the end of 1698...
adapted by Bernard Baron
Bernard Baron
Bernard Baron, an eminent French engraver, was born in Paris about the year 1700. He was instructed in engraving by Nicolas-Henri Tardieu, whose style he followed. He engraved several plates for the Crozat Collection, and afterwards came to England, where he resided the remainder of his life, and...
, which depicted Folly drawing Fortune
Fortuna
Fortuna can mean:*Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck -Geographical:*19 Fortuna, asteroid*Fortuna, California, town located on the north coast of California*Fortuna, United States Virgin Islands...
in a cart while she showered a crowd of hopeful investors with bubbles of air and worthless shreds of paper rather than with the riches for which they hoped. Hogarth's print was created in 1721 as a response to the foreign engravings. The events had personal piquancy for Hogarth, given his father's detention as a debtor in Fleet Prison
Fleet Prison
Fleet Prison was a notorious London prison by the side of the Fleet River in London. The prison was built in 1197 and was in use until 1844. It was demolished in 1846.- History :...
from 1707–12 and his early death in 1718. The South Sea Scheme is an early essay in engraving by Hogarth, who had set up on his own as a copperplate artist and painter after his apprenticeship with silver engraver Ellis Gamble came to an early end in 1720.
Description
The print shows a LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
scene, with the Guildhall
Guildhall, London
The Guildhall is a building in the City of London, off Gresham and Basinghall streets, in the wards of Bassishaw and Cheap. It has been used as a town hall for several hundred years, and is still the ceremonial and administrative centre of the City of London and its Corporation...
and its monumental statue of the giant Gog
Gog and Magog
Gog and Magog are names that appear primarily in various Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures, as well as numerous subsequent references in other works. Their context can be either genealogical or eschatological and apocalyptic, as in Ezekiel and Revelation...
(or Magog) to the left, a classical column based on The Monument
Monument to the Great Fire of London
The Monument to the Great Fire of London, more commonly known as The monument, is a 202 ft tall stone Roman Doric column in the City of London, England, near the northern end of London Bridge. It stands at the junction of Monument Street and Panda Bear Hill, 202 ft from where the Great...
to the Great Fire of London
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...
to the right, and the dome of St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...
rising behind the buildings in the background. The base of the column bears an inscription which states: "This monument was erected in memory of the destruction of the city by the South Sea in 1720", while foxes fight above. It is no coincidence that in Hogarth's scene the monument, a symbol of the City's greed, dwarves St Paul's, a symbol of Christian charity.
Pickpocketing
Pickpocketing is a form of larceny that involves the stealing of money or other valuables from the person of a victim without their noticing the theft at the time. It requires considerable dexterity and a knack for misdirection...
rifles through the pockets of a larger gentleman. Paulson identifies the first as a caricature of Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
, who profited from the South Sea Scheme; and speculates that the other is John Gay
John Gay
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...
, who, refusing to cash in enough of his stock to enable himself to have "a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day for life", lost his investment and all his imagined profits. The image of the wheel is a parody of Jacques Callot
Jacques Callot
Jacques Callot was a baroque printmaker and draftsman from the Duchy of Lorraine . He is an important figure in the development of the old master print...
's La Pendaison from the series The Miseries and Misfortunes of War
Les Grandes Misères de la guerre
Les Grandes Misères de la guerre are a series of 18 etchings by French artist Jacques Callot , titled in full "Les Misères et les Malheurs de la Guerre". Despite the grand theme of the series, the images are in fact only about 83 mm x 180 mm each, and are called the "large" Miseries to...
, and the crowd has elements taken from his La Roue. Women line a balcony to the upper left, queuing to enter a building surmounted by stag's antlers
Cuckold
Cuckold is a historically derogatory term for a man who has an unfaithful wife. The word, which has been in recorded use since the 13th century, derives from the cuckoo bird, some varieties of which lay their eggs in other birds' nests...
, under a sign which offers "Raffleing for Husbands with Lottery Fortunes In Here".
The satire is accentuated by a series of allegorical figures, identified by letters explained in the verse below. To the left, a blindfolded Fortune hangs by her hair from the balcony of the Guildhall (the devil's shop) while a winged devil cuts off parts of her body with a scythe and throws the bloody chunks into the baying crowd. In the bottom left corner, distinctive clothing identifies a Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
, a Jew and a Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
, who are ignoring the tumultuous scene to concentrate on their game of chance. To their right, the naked figure of Honesty is broken on the wheel by Self-interest while an Anglican priest looks on; further right, Villainy – who has removed his fair mask which now hangs upside down between his legs – scourges Honour beneath the column. Standing nearby is a monkey (a symbol of mimicry or "aping") who wears a gentleman's sword and a baronial hat
Chapeau
-Mainland Europe:"Chapeau" is a French term signifying a hat or other covering for the head. In mainland European heraldry, it is used as a mark of ecclesiastical dignity, especially that of cardinals, which is called the red chapeau...
, and wraps himself in Honour's cloak. In the lower right corner, the figure of Trade lies asleep or dead, ignored by all.
Underneath, a verse reads:
See here ye Causes why in London, So many Men are made, & undone, That Arts, & honest Trading drop, To Swarm about ye Devils shop, (A) Who Cuts out (B) Fortunes Golden Haunches, |
Trapping their Souls with Lotts and Chances, Shareing em from Blue Garters down To all Blue Aprons in the Town. Here all Religions flock together, Like Tame and Wild Fowl of a Feather, |
Leaving their strife Religious bustle, Kneel down to play at pitch and Hussle; (C) Thus when the Sheepherds are at play, Their flocks must surely go Astray; The woeful Cause yt in these Times |
(E) Honour, & (D) honesty, are Crimes, That publickly are punish'd by (G) Self Interest, and (F) Vilany; So much for monys magick power Guess at the Rest you find out more. |
Hogarth may have tried to sell copies of the print in 1721, but no advertisements for the issue of the print are known. In 1724, following his unsuccessful attempt to break the printmakers' monopoly by self-publishing his popular print The Bad Taste of the Town (also known as Masquerades and Operas), Hogarth sold his South Sea print, and another 1724 engraving entitled The Lottery, through the printsellers Mrs Chilcott in Westminster Hall and R Caldwell in Newgate Street. Prints were sold for 1 shilling
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
each. Various states of the print exist; between the first and second state some minor corrections were made, including a change from "And Swarm" to "To Swarm" in the fourth line of the verse, but all other states only change the publication line to reflect a corresponding change in the printseller. The last known state, produced sometime after 1751, has the publication line erased completely. An early sketch, noted in Oppe's catalogue, omits St Paul's, the Guildhall, and various figures on the merry-go-round, shows Honesty as a woman, and has different wording for the inscriptions on the monument and raffle house.
Reception
Ronald PaulsonRonald Paulson
Ronald Paulson , is an American professor of English, a specialist in English 18th-century art and culture, and English artist William Hogarth.-Education:...
has described Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme as "the one original Bubble print by an English artist". John J. Richetti, in The Cambridge history of English literature, 1660-1780, states that "English graphic satire really begins with Hogarth's Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme".