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Books

Hogarth and the harlots of Covent Garden were many things, but they weren't 'bohemians'

Vic Gatrell's The First Bohemians is a chaotic work — but it's good on coffee

2 November 2013

9:00 AM

2 November 2013

9:00 AM

The First Bohemians Vic Gatrell

Allen Lane, pp.484, £25

It was Hazlitt who said of Hogarth that his pictures ‘breathe a certain close, greasy, tavern air’, and the same could be said of this book. It describes the fermenting stews of 18th-century Covent Garden, and the pungent work of the artists who lived and worked among them, Hog- arth and Thomas Rowlandson in particular.

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