This final volume takes Hogarth from his 53rd year to his death at 67. The period opens with Hogarth at the height of his powers; a figure of influence with the literary generation of Richardson and Fielding, he was known to an unprecedented spectrum of English men and women. At this point, Hogarth chose to philosophise about art, extending his successful practice into aesthetic theory, in The Analysis of Beauty, partly in reaction to the agitation for an art academy based on the French model, partly out of conviction that his art required verbal validation, and partly (some contemporaries felt) out of hubris. And at the same moment, the hard-won fabric of his reputation began to unravel. A new generation had arisen - some friendly and interested in building on Hogarth's achievement, but some determined to supercede what seemed to be, in England of the 1750's, too insular a figure to represent English art and culture to the world.