An  Old  Sport

Hogarth, William (1697 London 1764). Pit Ticket – Royal Sport. The betting party of all classes at the cock-fight. Etching. Inscribed: Design’d and Engrav’d by Will^m. Hogarth / Publish’d according to Act of Parliament Nov. 5^th 1759. 32 x 38.7 cm.

Illustration Hogarth Catalogue Zurich, 1983, 79. – Harmonic wide-margined impression, perhaps from the complete edition published by Boydell 1790-1809. Weak waterstreak in the wide white margin. There, too, some backed tears.

Centre of the cramped party is the “Blind Lord” seen on all London betting events of those years, here, too, backing freely. “Whereas on the other side … a better who looses in a poor mood … At the side of the butcher betting with his lordship a person sits that records the different bets without paying attention to the fighting animals. Then follows an official of the cockpit … who observes the hot fight of the two animals with the looks of a seasoned veteran … Sideward … (a) player who throws a coin into the arena to challenge for a bet. The latter is … accepted by a jockey sitting on the opposite side pointing with his finger at it … A last betting person … is introduced by his shadow only that is thrown onto the battle-ground. It is the shadow of an unlucky one who could not pay for a lost bet. According to the laws of the cockpit such one is put into a basket and drawn up to the ceiling. In this pitiful position the punished one is carried away by the common passion. He offers his watch for betting …” (Lichtenberg).
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– – – – The same in a wide-margined impression from the plate reworked by the royal engraver James Heath (1757 London 1834, “earned applause early”, Nagler) about 1822 (“Even these impressions became relatively rare today though”, Art Gallery Esslingen 1970; and Meyers Konv.-Lex., 4^th ed., VIII [1888], 625: “A fine edition”).
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– – – The same in engraving by Thomas Cook (c. 1744 – London 1818). Inscribed: Hogarth pinx^t. / T. Cook sculp^t. / Published by Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, Jan^y. 1^st. 1808. Subject size 14.2 x 17.1 cm. – Trimmed within the wide white platemark. – Cook’s smaller repetition of the sujet.
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– – – The same in engraving by Carl Heinrich Rahl (Hoffenheim 1779 – Vienna 1843). (1818/23.) Inscribed: 45. 22.4 x 28.7 cm. – Lower margin trimmed to platemark, but negligible.
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– – – The same in engraving by Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen (1765 Göttingen 1840, university engraver there). Inscribed: 45 / W. Hogarth inv. / R. f. 23 x 29.7 cm. – Early toned impression. – Riepenhausen’s engravings after Hogarth (“very estimable”, Nagler) belong to his chief work and not least for their side-correctness they are partly even preferred to Hogarth’s own engravings.
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– – – The same by Riepenhausen as before, but on slightly toned minor paper.
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– – – The same by Riepenhausen as before, but on especially buff paper, supposedly about 1850.
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– – – The same in lithography by C. C. Böhme. (1833/36.) Inscribed: C. C. Böhme litho. / Ein Hahnen Gefecht. 26.8 x 23.7 cm. – Upper margin partly trimmed to the image’s edge. – With detailed subtext of 19 lines à la Lichtenberg in German.
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– – – The same in steel engraving about 1840. Inscribed: Das Hahnen-Gefecht. / The Cock Pit. 13.2 x 14.8 cm.
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“ I have received the copy of Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre … I am very pleased with it. Thank you very much for your help ”

(Mrs. C. C., March 7, 2003)