Title
Credulity, superstition and fanaticism
1762
Artist
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Details
- Date
- 1762
- Media category
- Materials used
- etching and engraving
- Dimensions
- 37.8 x 33.0 cm platemark
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased with funds provided by the European Art Collection Benefactors 2011
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 145.2011
- Copyright
- Artist information
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William Hogarth
Works in the collection
- Share
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About
This print started off as an elaborate satire on the ‘enthusiasm’ of Methodist preaching. Hogarth later revised the composition, extending it to a broader attack on ‘credulity, superstition and fanaticism’. The fainting woman on the left is Mary Tofts, who tricked people into believing she gave birth to rabbits. On the right, a religious thermometer measures the congregation’s reaction to the sermon. The preacher, holding puppets of a devil and a witch, is exposed as a charlatan by his harlequin shirt. His falling wig reveals a monastic tonsure, suggesting that Methodism and Popery amount to the same thing.
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Exhibition history
Shown in 1 exhibition
European prints and drawings 1500-1900, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 30 Aug 2014–02 Nov 2014
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Bibliography
Referenced in 3 publications
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Ronald Paulson, Hogarth's graphic works, New Haven, 1965, no 210.
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Ronald Paulson, Hogarth’s graphic works, London, 1989, pp 175–78, no 210a, illus p 409.
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Susannah Smith, Look, 'On the hop', Sydney, Mar 2020-Apr 2020, p 80, col illus p 80.
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Provenance
Andrew Edmunds Prints & Drawings, London/England, Purchased by the AGNSW from Andrew Edmunds Prints & Drawings 2011