Title
Gin Lane
1751
Artist
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Details
- Date
- 1751
- Media category
- Materials used
- etching and engraving
- Edition
- ii/iv states (first published state)
- Dimensions
- 38.5 x 31.9 cm (trimmed to platemark)
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased 2011
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 323.2011
- Copyright
- Artist information
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William Hogarth
Works in the collection
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About
The setting is the poverty-stricken slums of St Giles, where the binge drinking of gin was a major social problem. A drunken mother is oblivious to her child’s fall into the stairwell of a gin cellar, while a skeletal ballad singer has passed out nearby. Gripe the pawnbroker is thriving, as people pawn everything for drink. Mothers quieten their babies with gin and children sip it. Hogarth published this print in support of a campaign to stop drunkenness among London’s poor. The Gin Act was passed in 1751, which introduced licensing of retail premises and a greatly reduced consumption.
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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 186.
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Ronald Paulson, Hogarth’s graphic works, London, 1989, pp 145–48, no 186, illus pp 370–71.
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Peter Raissis, Look, 'That way madness lies', Sydney, Apr 2023-May 2023, pp 22–25: p 23–24, illus p 22.
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Provenance
Andrew Edmunds Prints & Drawings, London/England, Purchased by the AGNSW from Andrew Edmunds Prints & Drawings 2011