X-Nico

Isaac Fawkes

Hogarth regarded Fawkes' popularity as indicative of the mentality of the public; as part of his act Fawkes produced money from thin air by an act of sleight-of-hand, which Hogarth may have seen as analogous to the exceptions of the investors in the South Sea Bubble (whom Hogarth had mocked earlier in his Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme).

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Fawkes himself was dead by this time, and though it is generally considered that Hogarth used a little artistic license in depicting Fawkes' booth as it had appeared in earlier times, it is impossible to say whether it is Fawkes or his son that appears in the scene, though Hogarth scholar Ronald Paulson thinks it more likely to be the father.

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He formed a close professional relationship with the clock and automata maker Christopher Pinchbeck and from the mid-1720s began to demonstrate Pinchbeck's designs in shows both in their own right and for magical effects in his conjuring act.

see also