The Physiognomist

Josef Bergler, the first director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, had only an indirect, mediated connection to the work of William Hogarth. Despite this, Bergler’s oeuvre brought to the Prague and by extension Czech scene the genre of reprroduced prints featuring present-day figures, a genre popularized in England by Hogarth. Bergler’s Physiognomist is an explicit reference to the influential text by the Swiss pastor Johann Caspar Lavater dating to the years 1775-1778.