How did 19th-century artists and critics reassess William Hogarth’s unfinished sketches?

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The Painter and His Pug, self-portrait by William Hogarth, oil on canvas, 1745; in the Tate Gallery, London. — William Hogarth *The Painter and His Pug*, self-portrait by William Hogarth, oil on canvas, 1745; in the Tate Gallery, London.

During his lifetime, William Hogarth’s spontaneous, unfinished sketches were largely ignored. It was not until the 19th century, in the wake of the Impressionist movement, that these works began to receive serious critical attention.1

While Hogarth’s heroic paintings were often viewed as failures, these sketches were later recognized for successfully synthesizing dynamic elements of the 17th-century Baroque style with an uncompromising realism and a fully expressive handling of paint. This reassessment marked a shift in how critics and artists perceived his technical approach, valuing the raw, expressive quality of his unfinished works that had previously been overlooked.1