Art

Two images on one plate. In The Bench Hogarth illustrates four pompous judges listening to a case in the Court of Common Pleas. Callously inattentive to the case before them, these undignified, pompous men, buried in their robes and wigs, slumber or read. Sarah Malcolm was convicted and hanged for the brutal murder of an elderly widow and her two servants. Hogarth visited her in Newgate prison a few days before her execution. Malcolm's life represented the kind of cautionary narrative that Hogarth utilised within Industry and Idleness and The Four Stages of Cruelty. Copper engraving. Uncoloured. Size: 23 x 43.8 cm. (9 x 17 inches)