Serpentine Sideboards, Hogarth’s Analysis, and the Beautiful Self

Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty is well known for its celebration of the waving “line of beauty” and serpentine “line of grace.” This paper analyzes a serpentine sideboard, now in the Chipstone Collection, as an embodiment of Hogarth’s aesthetic system. By arguing that the sideboard embodies Hogarth’s aesthetics, this essay explores how the beautiful inanimate object acted as a model body for its contemporary viewers. Beauty was constructed as an attribute of the elite, and the responsibility to be a beautiful self was conferred more heavily on women than on men, so that the Chipstone sideboard can be read as a classed and gendered thing that negotiates aesthetic objectification.