David Garrick as Richard III

In 1745 David Garrick was a young actor taking London by storm, and William Hogarth painted him in the role that made his name, Shakespeare's Richard III. The moment is the eve of the battle of Bosworth. The king has just dreamed of the ghosts of everyone he murdered on his way to the crown, and he wakes in his tent and lurches up, hand thrown out against the empty air. Hogarth twists the body into a long S-curve he thought the most graceful line a figure could take. He sold the picture for 200 pounds, said at the time to be the most anyone had yet paid a living English painter. It now hangs in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.