William Hogarth, George Lambert, John Rich and The Sublime Society of Beef Steaks

• Published in: The British art journal Vol. 23; no. 3; pp. 79 - 85
• Main Author: Barlow, Jeremy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London British Art Journal 01-12-2022; Art Journals Ltd
• Subjects: Clubs; Culture; Organizations; Royalty
• ISSN: 1467-2006

Barlow discusses the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks in London, England. Among hundreds of forgotten clubs in Georgian London, the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks is remembered today for its striking name, for its odd traditions, and for its most famous founder member, William Hogarth. Information on the club's traditions derives mostly from 19th-century sources, especially Walter Arnold's The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks (London 1871), published four years after the club had folded. Biographers have used Arnold to provide a context for Hogarth's membership in the 1730s and '40s. The Beef Steaks motto was 'Beef and Liberty' and its emblem a gridiron. Beef and liberty had been linked in English minds since 1660, when London butchers burnt rumps of beef to protest at the reinstatement of the Interregnum's Rump Parliament, shortly before the restoration of the monarchy.