Rake's Progress Painting Series (1734). A Rake's Progress is a series of eight paintings by 18th-century English artist William Hogarth. The canvases were produced in 1732-34, then engraved in 1734 and published in print form in 1735. The series shows the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, the spendthrift son and heir of a rich merchant, who comes to London, wastes all his money on luxurious living, prostitution and gambling, and as a consequence is imprisoned in the Fleet Prison and ultimately Bethlem Hospital. The original paintings are in the collection of Sir John Soane's Museum in London, where they are normally on display for a short period each day. The filmmaker Alan Parker has described the works as an ancestor to the storyboard. In the first painting, Tom has come into his fortune on the death of his miserly father. While the servants mourn, he is measured for new clothes. Although he has had a common-law marriage with her, he now rejects the hand of his pregnant fiancée, Sarah Young, whom he had promised to marry. He pays her off, but she still loves him, as becomes clear in the fourth painting. Evidence of the father's miserliness abound: his portrait above the fireplace shows him counting money; symbols of hospitality have been locked up at upper right; the coat of arms shows three clamped vises with the motto Beware; a half-starved cat reveals the father kept little food in the house, while lack of ashes in the fireplace demonstrates that he rarely spent money on wood to heat his home. The engraving, which is reversed left-to-right compared to the painting, shows the father went so far as to resole his shoes with a piece of leather cut from a Bible cover. In the second painting, Tom is at his morning levée in London, attended by musicians and other hangers-on all dressed in expensive costumes. Surrounding Tom from left to right: a music master at a harpsichord, who was supposed to represent George Frideric Handel; a fencing master; a quarterstaff instructor; a dancing master with a violin; a landscape gardener, Charles Bridgeman; an ex-soldier offering to be a bodyguard; a bugler of a fox hunt club. At lower right is a jockey with a silver trophy. The quarterstaff instructor looks disapprovingly on both the fencing and dancing masters. Both masters appear to be in the French style, which was a subject Hogarth loathed. Upon the wall, between paintings of roosters, there is a painting of the Judgement of Paris. Main article: A Rake's Progress, 3: The Tavern Scene The third painting depicts a wild party or orgy underway at a brothel. The prostitutes are stealing the drunken Tom's watch. On the floor at bottom right is a night watchman's staff and lantern, souvenirs of Tom's 'wild night' on the town. The scene takes place at the Rose Tavern, a famous brothel in Covent Garden. The prostitutes have black spots on their faces to cover syphilitic sores. In the fourth, he narrowly escapes arrest for debt by Welsh bailiffs as he travels in a sedan chair to a party at St. James's Palace to celebrate Queen Caroline's birthday on Saint David's Day. On this occasion he is saved by the intervention of Sarah Young, the girl he had earlier rejected; she is apparently a dealer in millinery. In comic relief, a man filling a street lantern spills the oil on Tom's head. This is a sly reference to how blessings on a person were accompanied by oil poured on the head; in this case, the 'blessing' being the 'saving' of Tom by Sarah, although Rakewell, being a rake, will not take the moral lesson to heart. In the engraved version, lightning flashes in the sky and a young pickpocket has just emptied Tom's pocket. The painting, however, shows the young thief stealing Tom's cane, and has no lightning. In the fifth, Tom attempts to salvage his fortune by marrying a rich but aged and ugly old maid at St Marylebone. In the background, Sarah arrives, holding their child while her indignant mother struggles with a guest. It looks as though Tom's eyes are already upon the pretty maid to his new wife's left during the nuptials. The sixth painting shows Tom pleading for the assistance of the Almighty in a gambling den at White's club in Soho after losing his reacquired wealth. Neither he nor the other obsessive gamblers seem to have noticed a fire that is breaking out behind them. All is lost by the seventh painting, and Tom is incarcerated in the notorious Fleet debtors' prison. He ignores the distress of both his angry new wife and faithful Sarah, who cannot help him this time. Both the beer-boy and jailer demand money from him.