Hogarth was the son of a poor schoolmaster and was apprenticed early to a silversmith. His ambition to do original engraving led him first to set up independently as an engraver of commercial plates, then to paint a handful of serious conversation pieces, before he turned to caricaturing the vices and follies of London society, the work for which he became best known^[3]. He also attacked the dominant neoclassical taste of his day directly, satirising the architect William Kent and the academicians associated with Burlington House rather than working within their preferred style^[3].

Marriage à la Mode, painted and engraved between 1743 and 1745, marked a shift in Hogarth's satire toward the aristocracy specifically, in contrast to French moralizing painters of the period who tended to dwell on the dilemmas of the middle classes rather than criticise the ruling elite directly^[2]. The Dance carries a title, The Happy Marriage, that identifies it as part of a projected sequel meant to show the rewards of a marriage founded on affection rather than one arranged for money and title, though the project was never carried through to a finished series in the way Marriage à la Mode was.

In 1745 Hogarth published a frontispiece to his engraved works showing a serpentine line lying on a painter's palette, labelled The Line of Beauty, and the public interest it provoked led him to write a full treatise, The Analysis of Beauty, explaining the idea^[1]. He argued that a single, precisely proportioned serpentine line, composed of two curves moving in opposite directions, was the true source of grace in nature and art, from the twist of a horn to the muscles and bones of the human body, since almost no bone in the body is actually straight^[1]. He extended the same principle explicitly to human movement, treating the line as the concrete basis not only of ornament but of the country dance itself and even the texture of flesh colour in painting^[3].