English painting had long developed in an independent direction from continental styles after being dependent until 1725 on artists who had immigrated.
William Hogarth, after an apprenticeship with a silver engraver where he learned the production of crests, arabesques, ciphers and genre pictures, became a very well-known painter and copper engraver. He learned painting and drawing at the private academy of James Thornhill and was the first English painter who achieved fame and fortune with his decorative painting of frescoes in churches, palaces and hospitals.
More than the Classical style, Hogarth was interested in the life around him, on the streets and in the pubs. He loved the boisterous atmosphere, and used a humour that had a pronounced tendency towards satire. He accentuated the ludicrous and thus his works leaned towards caricature. And the deeper he immersed himself in the goings-on in the bars and the “dens of iniquity” of the rich, the more he fell into the role of moral preacher, who told the truth not laughingly, but held severe sermons and sought to strike at all the vice and folly of his time. Hogarth etched and engraved most of his humorous and satirical genre pictures on copper, but some were painted in oils, of which few have survived. One of the remaining pictures is from his satirical work, and is called Marriage A-la-Mode (1742-1744). It shows a couple who are brought together by money and class interests rather than by love.
With these and other images, reproduced through copper engravings, Hogarth achieved greater renown than with his individual sheets that satirized the political events and severely criticized the government. This made him the forerunner of political caricature in England. His opinions on art and the character of beauty was best expressed in his book Analysis of Beauty (1753), which were written mainly for the edification of his contemporaries, who found nothing wrong in his lifestyle or his ideas of beauty.
Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach was for Austria what Andreas Schlüter was for Berlin: the first artist to receive a noble title for his works. Trained in Italy, he worked exclusively in the forms of the Italian Baroque style which he applied with a certain reticence and with a careful calculation of the monumental effects. This is evident in the design of the new Hofburg of which he only completed the Court Chancellery, the Court Library (1709-1717) and the Winter Riding School (1729-1735). Other notable constructions include the Schwarzenberg palaces (1697-1728) in Vienna, Clam-Gallas Palace (from 1757) in Prague, and the Karlskirche (1716-1737), which was completed by Fischer’s son after his death. Especially noticeable in these are a lengthened ellipsoidal dome and a quite extraordinary façade. It features two Roman-type columns that rise above the lower corner towers give the façade a strong decorative effect. Fischer was also the originator of the universal history of architecture in the form of copper engravings, the Entwurf einer historischen Architektur (1721).