English artist William Hogarth undertook a brief apprenticeship as a silversmith before attending Sir James Thornhill’s then recently opened art school. He worked in designing plates for booksellers until he began producing work on his own account. Hogarth first achieved financial success with A Harlot’s Progress, a series of paintings from which he produced engravings in 1732. He helped found St. Martin’s Lane Academy, an important forerunner to the Royal Academy in 1735. His investigation into the aesthetic principles of art, Analysis of Beauty, was published in 1753.