The Rake’s Progress

RAKEWELL and TRULOVE are a companion pair of TV Quilts inspired by Hogarth and Hockney.

The Rake’s Progress opera was written by Igor Stravinsky with a libretto by WH Auden and Chester Kallman; and first performed in 1951. Glyndebourne commissioned set designs by David Hockney for the iconic 1975 production; revived in the Glyndebourne Festival 2023.

William Hogarth told the parable of Tom Rakewell’s decline from inherited fortune to the madhouse in eight paintings depicting the vice and dissolution of early 18th century London. In the libretto, Tom’s long-suffering betrothed, Sarah Young, is renamed Anne Trulove, faithful to the last. David Hockney took inspiration from the paintings and also from the engravings that Hogarth made later as a subscription enterprise: the set designs are crosshatched in a combination of monochrome and bright Biro colours.

In these quilts, he stands onstage in rakish red and murky backroom browns, she in the fresh spring colours of youth and hope and true love, both surrounded by monochrome drapes and Regency swags.

I am grateful to Merchant & Mills Ltd., Rye, for their generous supply of checked and striped linen.

Main photo and centre below by Angela Moore