We See a Ghost: Hogarth's Satire on Methodists and Connoisseurs

Abstract

“We See a Ghost” compares William Hogarth's print Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism (1762) with its rather different, unpublished first state, Enthusiasm Delineated (1761). The latter is revealed as a polemic on shopworn French academic art theory, including the systems proposed by Charles LeBrun and Roger de Piles, and on misplaced, even erotically passionate enthusiasm for the old masters. Fearing to cause a scandal with the blasphemous art lovers of the first state, Hogarth remade the print into a satire on Methodist fanaticism, the version that was published.

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Notes on contributors

Bernd Krysmanski

A student of the German art historian Werner Busch (Freie Universität Berlin), Bernd Krysmanski studied natural sciences and art in Düsseldorf and art history at the University of Bochum. He is working on an annotated international two-volume Hogarth bibliography, 1697 to 1997 [THG, Voerder Strasse 30, D-46535 Dinslaken, Germany].