page_title: A Rake's Progress
section_title: IV – The Arrest
hierarchical_section_title: A Rake's Progress / Paintings / IV – The Arrest
caption_attribution_description: William Hogarth: A Rake's Progress, Plate 4: Arrested For Debt, Engraving, 35.5 x 41cm
context_page_description: A Rake's Progress is a series of eight paintings by 18th-century English artist William Hogarth. The canvases were produced in 1732–1734, 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.
context_section_description: In the fourth, he narrowly escapes arrest for debt by Welsh bailiffs (as signified by the leeks, a Welsh emblem, in their hats) 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 (Saint David is the patron saint of Wales). 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.
caption: The Arrest (engraving)
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