Explore the Description of this artwork, Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme.
The print shows a London scene, with the Guildhall and its monumental statue of the giant Gog (or Magog) to the left, a classical column based on The Monument to the Great Fire of London to the right, and the dome of St Paul's Cathedral rising behind the buildings in the background. The base of the column bears an inscription which states: "This monument was erected in memory of the destruction of the city by the South Sea in 1720", while foxes fight above. It is no coincidence that in Hogarth's scene the monument, a symbol of the City's greed, dwarfs St Paul's, a symbol of Christian charity.The centre of the print is occupied by a financial wheel of fortune or merry-go-round ridden by figures easily recognized in society, including a whore and a clergyman on the left, then a housewife and a hunchback, and a Scottish nobleman to the right on a fat-faced horse. The ride is surmounted by a goat and the slogan "Who'l Ride" and surrounded by a jostling crowd below. To the front of the crowd, a short pickpocket rifles through the pockets of a larger gentleman. Paulson identifies the first as a caricature of Alexander Pope, who profited from the South Sea Scheme; and speculates that the other is John Gay, who, refusing to cash in enough of his stock to enable himself to have "a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day for life", lost his investment and all his imagined profits. The image of the wheel is a parody of Jacques Callot's La Pendaison from the series The Miseries and Misfortunes of War, and the crowd has elements taken from his La Roue. Women line a balcony to the upper left, queuing to enter a building surmounted by stag's antlers, under a sign which offers "Raffleing for Husbands with Lottery Fortunes in Here".
The satire is accentuated by a series of allegorical figures, identified by letters explained in the verse below. To the left, a blindfolded Fortune hangs by her hair from the balcony of the Guildhall (the devil's shop) while a winged devil cuts off parts of her body with a scythe and throws the bloody chunks into the baying crowd. In the bottom left corner, distinctive clothing identifies a Catholic, a Jew and a Puritan, who are ignoring the tumultuous scene to concentrate on their game of chance. To their right, the naked figure of Honesty is broken on the wheel by Self-interest while an Anglican priest looks on; further right, Villainy – who has removed his fair mask which now hangs upside down between his legs – scourges Honour beneath the column. Standing nearby is a monkey (a symbol of mimicry or "aping") who wears a gentleman's sword and a baronial hat, and wraps himself in Honour's cloak. In the lower right corner, the figure of Trade lies asleep or dead, ignored by all.
Underneath, a verse reads:Hogarth may have tried to sell copies of the print in 1721, but no advertisements for the issue of the print are known. In 1724, following his unsuccessful attempt to break the printmakers' monopoly by self-publishing his popular print The Bad Taste of the Town (also known as Masquerades and Operas), Hogarth sold his South Sea print, and another 1724 engraving entitled The Lottery, through the printsellers Mrs Chilcott in Westminster Hall and R Caldwell in Newgate Street. Prints were sold for 1 shilling each. Various states of the print exist; between the first and second state some minor corrections were made, including a change from  "And Swarm" to "To Swarm" in the fourth line of the verse, but all other states only change the publication line to reflect a corresponding change in the printseller. The last known state, produced sometime after 1751, has the publication line erased completely. An early sketch, noted in Oppe's catalogue, omits St Paul's, the Guildhall, and various figures on the merry-go-round, shows Honesty as a woman, and has different wording for the inscriptions on the monument and raffle house.
Jew shilling wheel of fortune stag's antlers The Bad Taste of the Town Anglican merry-go-round The Miseries and Misfortunes of War right Fortune Oppe Puritan St Paul's Cathedral Monument to the Great Fire of London Gog allegorical figure Alexander Pope John Gay the Guildhall broken on the wheel The Lottery Great Fire of London satire The Monument baronial hat caricature Jacques Callot pickpocket