The Bench; The Five Orders of Perriwigs

The Bench alludes to Hogarth's concern with corrupt judges in the Court of Common Pleas, and with the metaphor of judgment in both moral and aesthetic matters. The print is closely tied to The Analysis of Beauty, specifically the long-nosed judge, who appears there in Plate 1 as an exemplar of disguised stupidity and poor judgement in art. The row of caricatured heads at the top was added by Hogarth to further clarify the distinction between Character and Caricature.

Hogarth's tongue-in-cheek study of wigs links the eighteenth-century rage for Vitruvius, which would deduce laws of composition and canons of beauty from the measure of ancient columns or statues, with the outlandish hairdos affected by fashionable society. The periwigs are arranged in various "orders": Episcopal, Old Peerian or Aldermanic (worn by peers and city officials), Lexonic (lawyers), Composite or Half Natural, and Queerinthian or Queue de Renard (Corinthian, the most elaborate, worn by consummate dandies).