William Hogarth
Portraits

Hogarth was also a popular portrait painter. In 1745, he painted actor David Garrick as Richard III, for which he was paid £200, "which was more", he wrote, "than any English artist ever received for a single portrait." With this picture Hogarth established the genre of theatrical portraiture as a distinctively British kind of history painting. In 1746, a sketch of Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, afterwards beheaded on Tower Hill, had an exceptional success.

In 1740, he created a truthful, vivid full-length portrait of his friend, the philanthropic Captain Coram, for the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children, now in the Foundling Museum. This portrait, and his unfinished oil sketch of a young fishwoman, entitled The Shrimp Girl (National Gallery, London), may be called masterpieces of British painting. There are also portraits of his wife, his two sisters, and of many other people; among them Bishop Hoadly and Bishop Herring. The engraved portrait of John Wilkes was a bestseller.
startend:quotation