candidate: In 19th - century British writing on art the terms " subject painting " or " anecdotic " painting were often used for works in a line of development going back to William Hogarth of monoscenic depictions of crucial moments in an implied narrative with unidentified characters , such as William Holman Hunt 's 1853 painting " The Awakening Conscience " or Augustus Egg 's " Past and Present " , a set of three paintings , updating sets by Hogarth such as " Marriage à - la - mode " .