The Analysis of Beauty, written by Hogarth and published in 1753, sets out the artist’s ideas on taste and artistic practice. The text is defensive in tone, written partly in response to criticism of Hogarth’s work, and partly anticipating criticism of the text itself. A key theme is the role of the curved ‘line of beauty’, which Hogarth had introduced into the frontispiece to his engraved works in 1745 as a teaser: ‘no Egyptian hieroglyphic ever amused more than it did for a time; painters and sculptors came to me to know the meaning of it, being as much puzzled with it as other people’. Hogarth’s treatise met with a hostile reaction from a number of commentators, among them Joshua Reynolds and Paul Sandby, but this copy, which bears the stamped arms associated with books owned by George II, was clearly acquired for the Royal Library soon after publication. However controversial, the text had a broad circulation.

Text adapted from The First Georgians; Art and Monarchy 1714 - 1760, London, 2014.