The Analysis of Beauty Written with a View of Fixing the Fluctuating Ideas of Taste

This volume, published in 1753, was Hogarth's grand treatise on beauty, design and taste and was intended to help educate the masses on how to perceive art. His most prominent idea is the line of beauty, which is an s-shaped line that can be seen?set inside a pyramid?on the title page. Hogarth's theory is that this line is what captures a viewer's attention and evokes a sense of grace and movement. Unfortunately for Hogarth, his book was largely lampooned by his contemporaries and critics, including Charles Churchill who satirized the work in his "An Epistle to William Hogarth."