Hogarth, Hockney and Stravinsky The Rake's Progress

On 16 May 2006 an exhibition organized by the State Hermitage together with the British Council and the PRO ARTE Institute, with support from the Ford Foundation, opened in the Foyer of the Hermitage Theatre. The works of three creative personalities from different ages have been united by a common theme - The Rake's Progress. The exhibition presents 32 etchings by David Hockney (Collection of the British Council, London) and by William Hogarth (State Hermitage). Excerpts from Igor Stravinsky's opera A Rake's Progress will be performed in the Hermitage Theatre by the "eNsemble" of the PRO ARTE Institute.

William Hogarth (1697-1764) was a personality of great importance for British art. As an 18th century engraver, painter and caricaturist, he created works depicting striking and dramatic scenes from English everyday life which was going through its bourgeois revolution. Among the etchings which were published in 1735 as The Rake's Progress, there are 8 scenes portraying the sad life's journey of a young man, Tom Rakewell, who has received an inheritance from his cheerless miser of a father and has cast prudence to the winds in merry London.

In 1947 Igor Stravinsky visited the Art Institute in Chicago where he saw an exhibit of William Hogarth's series of engravings. The engravings made such a big impression on him that, then and there, Stravinsky decided to write an opera on the subject. Stravinsky approached the English poet W.H. Auden, who was well known for his knowledge of classical literature, with the request that he write the libretto.

The English artist David Hockney was 24 years old when he visited New York for the first time in his life in 1961. This metropolis and its pulsating life amazed Hockney and he began to work on his own version of The Rake's Progress - a series 16 etchings entitled The Rake's Progress in New York. His main character, a touching and clumsy bespectacled man from the provinces who is crushed by the bit city, elicits the sympathy of both author and viewer.

The success of Hockney's etchings assured him a prestigious commission to create the decorations for Stravinsky's opera when it was staged at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1975. This was the artist's first experience working in a theater. This is how the production in Glyndebourne, which is considered the best staging of The Rake's Progress to date, has linked the names of Hogarth, Stravinsky, Auden and Hockney.

The curator of the exhibition is A.V. Ippolitov, senior researcher of the Department of Western European Art in the State Hermitage. A scholarly illustrated catalogue of the exhibition has been prepared and features articles by A.V. Ippolitov and L.A. Dukelskaya, senior researcher, Department of Western European Art, State Hermitage.

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At the opening ceremony

Stephen Kinnock, Director of the British Council in St.Petersburg and North West Russia

Arkady Ippolitov, Curator of the exhibition, Senior researcher of the Department of Western European Art in the State Hermitage

Elena Kolovskaya, Executive Director of the Institute PRO ARTE

The exhibition catalogue

At the concert in the Hermitage Theatre