Taste in High Life is an oil-on-canvas painting (engraving

Engraving

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...

 seen on the right) from around 1742, by William Hogarth

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"...

. The version seen on the right was engraved by Samuel Phillips in 1798, under commission from John Boydell

John Boydell

John Boydell was an 18th-century British publisher noted for his reproductions of engravings. He helped alter the trade imbalance between Britain and France in engravings and initiated a British tradition in the art form...

 for a posthumous edition of Hogarth's works, but Phillips's final, third state was not published until 1808.

Analysis

The work, a forerunner of Marriage à-la-mode, was intended to satirise and poke fun at the types of dress and garbs that were in fashion at the time, and the superficiality of the tastes and nature of the aristocracy in general. Several figures are seen in the painting, all of whom are dressed in heavily caricatured renditions of the fashion that reigned in the 1740s. Most prominently exhibited is an elderly woman wearing a sacque covered with satirically overblown roses expanded by a large hoop. Standing near her is an opulently dressed man, thought to be "Beau" Colyear, 2nd Earl of Portmore

Charles Colyear, 2nd Earl of Portmore

Charles Colyear, 2nd Earl of Portmore KT was a Scottish nobleman, known as Beau Colyear for his conspicuous dress....

 (the dress he wears is said to be the very same he wore to his birthday in the year of the painting's creation) The two huddle together in admiration over the minute porcelain cup held by the lady and saucer held by the lord. Also part of the company is another woman clutching the chin of a black page boy wearing a turban

Turban

In English, Turban refers to several types of headwear popularly worn in the Middle East, North Africa, Punjab, Jamaica and Southwest Asia. A commonly used synonym is Pagri, the Indian word for turban.-Styles:...

 – thought to be designed after Ignatius Sancho

Ignatius Sancho

Ignatius Sancho was a composer, actor, and writer. He is the first known Black Briton to vote in a British election. He gained fame in his time as "the extraordinary Negro", and to 18th century British abolitionists he became a symbol of the humanity of Africans and immorality of the slave trade...

, an actor and writer, in his youth – both of whom are also dressed as exquisitely as the first two. The black page, holding a type of Chinese porcelain figure, is a servant, and was painted in as an element of irony in the work; as a slave, he mocks his masters, who themselves bowed before fashions and the latest frivolities of upper-class life. Even the monkey

Monkey

A monkey is a primate, either an Old World monkey or a New World monkey. There are about 260 known living species of monkey. Many are arboreal, although there are species that live primarily on the ground, such as baboons. Monkeys are generally considered to be intelligent. Unlike apes, monkeys...

 standing in the centre foreground wears a flowing, cuffed robe as he examines the list of purchases made by one of the four – it is not known whom – at a recent auction

Auction

An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder...

. In the painting on the wall, the transitory nature of fashion is represented by the cupids at left, who use a bellows to blow up a fire of discarded petticoats and wigs; at right, the classical form of the female sculpture is contrasted with the cutaway rear view of her enormous hoop underskirt stiffened with whalebone, "the mode 1742" as the painting's legend has it. The fashionable hoops make the seated lady's dress rise up ridiculously behind her, and in a vignette on the fire-screen at right, a lady is shown trapped in a sedan chair that is filled by her hoops—this woman appears again in the background of Hogarth's Beer Street

Beer Street and Gin Lane

Beer Street and Gin Lane are two prints issued in 1751 by English artist William Hogarth in support of what would become the Gin Act. Designed to be viewed alongside each other, they depict the evils of the consumption of gin as a contrast to the merits of drinking beer...

in 1752.

Commissioning

The work was commissioned by Mary Edwards of Kensington, a consistent patron of Hogarth's. Miss Edwards, who had inherited a sum of more than £50,000 pounds a year at the age of twenty-four, was considered eccentric, having married a son of the fourth Duke of Hamilton, whom she discarded when he turned out to be profligate. On this occasion she engaged the services of Hogarth with the specific intent of commissioning a painting that would humorously mock what she considered to be the ridiculous fashions and indulgences of the upper class

Upper class

In social science, the "upper class" is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area.- Historical meaning :...

 of the time, and "female adornment". It is reported that she did this as an act of vengeance

Revenge

Revenge is a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. It is also called payback, retribution, retaliation or vengeance; it may be characterized, justly or unjustly, as a form of justice.-Function in society:Some societies believe that the...

, as she had been ridiculed by the type of people scoffed at in the painting. For a price of sixty guinea

Guinea (British coin)

The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...

s, Hogarth agreed to fulfil her request, but it is known that he was not particularly fond of his work; Hogarth often felt less enthusiastic about productions for which a specific commission was made, that were executed to order.