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Passionate nationalist that he was, Hogarth was not much of a traveller, but in his fiftieth year he crossed the Channel and ended up skewering his country's traditional enemy, France, with this famous painting. The story behind the picture is as engaging as the scene itself. Hogarth was sketching the Calais gate that the English had built when the occupied the city from 1346 to 1558, when suddenly a French soldier seized the artist and arrested him as a spy. Hogarth was confined to his lodging until the wind was up and he could be shipped home. The outrage stung his pride and his British sense of justice, and he retaliated with this painting.
The scene is a view into Calais from the city's outer gate. The inner gate, the one built by the English and still embossed with the conqueror's arms, looks like a massive face; its portal and drop gate resemble a fanged and gaping mouth, the coat of arms and centrepiece the eyes and forehead. But the picture's main focus is a succulent side of a raw English beef that a cook is delivering to an English eating-house. Hogarth is delightedly pointing up the stark difference between life in France and England: his country's celebrated export, the hefty side of beef - appears monumental to the haggard, impoverished residents of Calais. Hogarth represents the only well-fed person in the scene as a Catholic priest. Two attenuated French soldiers in tricorn hats regard the slab of meat with disbelief; one is so overcome at its enormous size that he spills his bowl of stew. A mercenary Irish soldier sneaks a look while wolfing his stew; another mercenary, a Scot, sits against the wall with his meagre repast of barley cake and onion beside him. Slatternly fishwives laugh at the human qualities in the features of a freshly caught skate, unaware that their own expressions are not much different. Hogarth himself appears with his sketchbook, and with a soldier's hand already resting on his shoulder.
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