'O the Roast Beef of Old England ('The Gate of Calais')', William Hogarth

Artwork details

Artist

William Hogarth (1697‑1764)

Title

O the Roast Beef of Old England ('The Gate of Calais')

Date 1748

MediumOil paint on canvas

Dimensionssupport: 788 x 945 mm frame: 1072 x 1228 x 105 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Presented by the Duke of Westminster 1895

Reference

N01464

On display at Tate Britain

Theme: BP Walk through British Art

Room: 1730

Summary

This painting is Hogarth's comment on his second visit to France in the summer of 1748, when he was arrested as a spy while sketching the arms of England on the old city gate at Calais. The contemporary diarist George Vertue records in August 1748 that Hogarth and Francis Hayman were 'attempting to draw some Views of Fortifications &c.were surprized & clapt into the Bastile. from whence they were soon glad to return to England' ('Vertue Note Books III', Walpole Society, vol.22, Oxford 1934, p.142). Hogarth took his revenge with this painting. The title was taken from a popular tune of the day, which extolled roast beef as the symbol of Britain's wealth and power.

Numerous xenophobic references indicate Hogarth's low opinion of the French. The huge side of British beef at the exact centre of the picture, destined for the English inn at Calais, is neatly balanced by the scrawny French soldier at the other side of the drawbridge. A fat friar, the only well-nourished Frenchman in the picture, covetously pokes the beef. In the right foreground, a starving Jacobite sits with his pathetic meal of an onion and a piece of bread, his overturned cup beside him. The Jacobites, the Scotsmen who fled to France after the unsuccessful Scottish rebellion of 1745, are further symbolised by the black crow which perches atop the stone cross above the drawbridge… (read more)