What did the silk designer Anna Maria Garthwaite (whose life inspired The Silk Weaver – published 26th January) have to do with the famous 18th century artist William Hogarth?
In an unpublished manuscript in the National Art Library, unfinished at her death, the late Natalie Rothstein, formerly curator of textiles at the V&A, hints at a tantalising connection between Hogarth and the weavers of Spitalfields: his famous series of prints, Industry and Idleness, published in 1747, show weavers at their looms. Six years later he published An Analysis of Beauty, in which he proposed that the serpentine curve – as seen in nature and the human form – was the essence of visual perfection. It is quite possible, Ms Rothstein suggests, that he had seen Anna Maria’s designs on the loom, and had been inspired by them.
What do you think?