The Reward of Cruelty

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

In the conclusion to the print series Four Stages of Cruelty , the corpse of the murderer Tom Nero is dissected in an anatomy theater. At this time the bodies of criminals were the main source of cadavers; here Hogarth pointedly left the hangman’s noose around Nero’s neck. The dog gnawing on an discarded organ, possibly the heart, refers to the character’s unseemly torture of a dog in the first print of the series.Hogarth commissioned this work and Cruelty in Perfection in a rare foray into the woodcut medium, but abandoned the experiment after only two prints; he published the complete series as smaller engravings a year later.

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