The Five Orders of Perriwigs as they were Worn at the Late Coronation Measured Architectonically. Etching with engraving by William Hogarth; second state of two. 32,8 x 23,4 cm. Condition: Repaired loss top left corner; repaired horizontal tear up to plate mark. The printing is of very good quality on laid paper. This is an edition printed during Hogarth’s lifetime. This is not one of the many posthumous reprints that both lose detail and exaggerate it by re-engraving and inking with dirty tarlatan and over-pigmented ink.

Resolute execution, with the rapid and trembling line of acid etching. Imitating, however, the forms of reproductive engraving, its grid and the virtuosity of the burin, used only in the texts. Hogarth adopted the conventions of reproductive engraving by inverting them: his paintings were made to be reproduced by his engravings, with which he actually did business and fame. This print did not begin with the drawing of a head. The heads are the filling of the gap of the wigs. The wig takes the place of the face, the fashion inscribes the values of the immutable and the powerful are represented as villains. Each order of wigs corresponds both to a social class and to an order of Palladian architecture, fashionable at the time.