A Rake's Progress (8)

In the last painting in the series Sarah finally gets to spend some quality time with Tom, except by now he's lost his marbles completely and has been thrown into Bedlam with all the other chiflados. His semi-naked figure looms in the foreground in a pose suggestive of inner turmoil morphing into outer rampage. Meanwhile, in the background high society women are checking out the unblanced talent on display in this famous mental hospital come afternoon-out.

A Rake's Progress (7)

By now Tom has been incarcerated in the notorious Fleet prison for debtors and still leaking money, as both his jailer and the beer boy are shown attempting to rake off his last few pennies.

Both his old wife and his young discarded lover are showing signs of distress at their inability to help him out this time (though the former might well be carping on at him directly into his left ear) and incipient madness is suggested by the telescope set up to poke through the bars and the alchemy experiment going on in the background.

A Rake's Progress (6)

Tom has now definitively mislaid his fortune (and his wig) in a gambling den.

Here he is in the foreground pleading for divine intervention. Unfortunately, this is the cue for someone at the rear to set fire to the joint. 

A Rake's Progress (5)

With pauperism seemingly imminent, Tom seeks a drastic solution: fast track courtship and marriage to a lady of means who would appear to be, might we say, no spring chicken.

The nuptials are interrupted — unsuccessfully — by the arrival of Sarah, her pushy mother and Tom's bastard child.

Rakewell's eyes are seen to drift towards his sugar mumma's maidservant. Meanwhile his bride's eyes drift in divergent directions.

A Rake's Progress (4)

By now Tom has some new characters following in his wake: Welsh bailiffs with leeks in their hats. Coincidentally it's St David's Day and Tom was on his way (in this early-modern version of the tuctuc) to St James's Palace to celebrate Queen Caroline's birthday. Ironies abound on this occasion, as it discarded ex-novia Sarah who intervenes here to save no-wallet Rakewell from public embarrassment. Meanwhile a young street urchin is relieving Tom of his cane.

A Rake's Progress (3)

Leaving behind his posse of chupasangres, Tom heads down to the Rose Tavern in Covent Garden, a house of considerable ill-repute, where the local hos wear black 'beauty' spots to hide their syphilitic sores, and are not above relieving our hero of his watch during a moment of orgiastic reverie.

A Rake's Progress (2)

Tom has arrived in the big city and duly acquired a full set of hangers on — including music, fencing and dancing instructors, a jockey (complete with trophy), a landscape architect and an old soldier applying for the position of bodyguard. Hogarth has done the dancing and fencing masters in the much disdained 'French' style. (i.e. poncey.)

A Rake's Progress (1)

Tom Rakewell has come into a fortune upon the death of his father. His first act of largesse? To pay off his pregnant fiancee Sarah Young, seen on the left holding his ring despondantly as her mother remonstrates with the young master whose new strides are being fitted. A starving cat investigates a chest full of silver.

(Canvasses by William Hogarth 1732-3, Sir John Soane's Museum, London.)