English painter and engraver, best known for his 'pictured morality', such as the Harlot's Progress (1730-1). William Hogarth also wrote a serious aesthetic tract, the Analysis of Beauty (1753), which classified the various types of line and curve which an artist might use, praising a 'precise serpentine line' as the key to pictorial beauty. Christopher Hussey suggested that Hogarth's book influenced the popularity of serpentine lines in eighteenth century gardens.
