Jane Hogarth was a British businesswoman who preserved the rights to the artwork of her husband, William Hogarth, following his death. She successfully continued to produce and sell his work for many years, working around the legal restrictions placed on women in her time.
Personal life
Hogarth was born circa 1709. Her father was Sir James Thornhill, a prominent painter at the time. Jane Hogarth married William Hogarth in 1729. She married her husband at Paddingtonwithout permission from her father, but was forgiven for this, allowing her husband to move in with her at her house at the Great Piazza in Covent Garden in 1731. As William Hogarth became more successful, the couple bought a second house in Chadwick, where many prominent scholars and performers of the time lived. The couple had no children but were involved in the Thomas Coram's Foundling Hospital. In 1760, William Hogarth fell ill, eventually moving from Chadwick back to their Covent Garden house, with Jane staying behind. In 1764, William died, leaving her the print business in his will.
Career
After the death of the artist, his wife continued to sell his work. She guarded his brand and kept his papers. Hogarth had limits to what she was permitted to do with her husband’s copperplates. She could not sell them without her sister in law's permission and had to pay her an annuity from the sale of the prints from the plates. If Hogarth remarried she was required to give certain plates to her sister in law. One difficulty that Hogarth had to deal with in the sales of her husband’s work was that the protection engendered by the Engraver's Act had begun to run out on his earlier works. Hogarth produced prints and advertised them as the authentic works and emphasised their moral nature. Hogarth also worked on creating books of her husband's works. She created one set with Rev’d John Trusler. This book was entitled Hogarth Moralized. With works by J.K. Sherwin, Hogarth published The Politician in 1774 which included prints of her husband's works. Hogarth also worked with Richard Livesay. They had a painting by William Hogarth turned into a print engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi, sold as Shrimps!. Hogarth ensured that she regained the protections of her husband's initial copyright. The bill of 29 June 1767 extended her rights from fourteen years to twenty years, giving her "the sole right and liberty of printing and reprinting all the said prints, etchings, and engravings, of the design and invention of the said William Hogarth, for and during the term of twenty years", and reverted rights to her alone even for those prints from 1735. Eventually as the sale of the prints lost value Hogarth was given a pension of forty pounds a year by the Royal Academy. Hogarth died in 13 November 1789 in Chiswick. Today the house in Chiswick is a museum.
