All the world is competent to judge my pictures except those who are of my profession.

The care and method with which the moral grounds of these pictures are laid is as remarkable as the wit and skill of the observing and dexterous artist. In his youth he was apprenticed to the engraver Ellis Gamble in Leicester Fields where he learned to engrave trade cards and similar products. The Gate of Calais
The Gate of Calais (1748; now in Tate Britain) was produced soon after his return from a visit to France.

Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian". William Hogarth (10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter printmaker pictorial satirist social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art.