Taste in High Life
Taste in High Life is an oil-on-canvas painting (engraving seen on the right) from around 1742, by William Hogarth. The version seen on the right was engraved by Samuel Phillips in 1798, under commission from John Boydell for a posthumous edition of Hogarth's works, but Phillips's final, third state was not published until 1808. Analysis The work, a forerunner of Marriage à-la-mode, was intended to satirise and poke fun at the types of dress and garbs that were in fashion at the time, and the superficiality of the tastes and nature of the aristocracy in general. Several figures are seen in the painting, all of whom are dressed in heavily caricatured renditions of the fashion that reigned in the 1740s. Most prominently exhibited is an elderly woman wearing a sacque covered with satirically overblown roses expanded by a large hoop. Standing near her is an opulently dressed man, thought to be "Beau" Colyear, 2nd Earl of Portmore (the dress he wears is said to be the very same he wore to his birthday in the year of the painting's creation) The two huddle together in admiration over the minute porcelain cup held by the lady and saucer held by the