UNIT 3
British Painting
The Marriage Settlement
William Hogarth was a major English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects". Much of his work poked fun at contemporary politics and customs; illustrations in such style are often referred to as "Hogarthian".
In 1743–1745 he painted the six pictures of Marriage ŕ-la-mode, a pointed skewering of upper class 18th century society. This moralistic warning shows the disastrous results of an ill-considered marriage for money. This is regarded by many as his finest project, certainly the best example of his serially-planned story cycles.
Hogarth challenges the ideal view that the rich live virtuous lives with a heavy satire on the notion of arranged marriages. In each piece, he shows the young couple and their family and acquaintances at their worst: engaging in affairs, drinking, gambling, and numerous other vices.
In the first of the series, he shows an arranged marriage between the son of bankrupt Earl Squanderfield and the daughter of a wealthy but miserly city merchant. The plot of the painting is the greed of the two fathers, the Alderman and the Earl. The Alderman is wealthy to excess, and the Earl is heavily in debt but still retains his ancient title. The Alderman is desirous of becoming the grandfather to a noble son, and the Earl wants to ensure his line is carried on, and is willing to put up with the common Alderman for the sake of his money.
Meanwhile, the soon to be married two are completely ignoring each other, and the bride is being courted by the lawyer. Myriad details show the true natures of the characters present, especially the Earl and his son.
The picture is filled with impossible or ridiculous details that prove the artist's incompetence or flattering nature and the Earl's vanity or stupidity in accepting it: the young Earl is shown wearing the French Order of the Golden Fleece, which no Englishman had ever been awarded at that date. A cannon that the Earl appears to be sitting on, indecorously fires grape shot. The painting is full of other contradictions: the wind is blowing the clothes one way but the Earl's wig the other; and one hand holds pagan symbols while the other a Christian emblem. In the top corner is a zephyr puffing the wind. Hogarth disliked such cherubs and is recorded as saying, "...an infant's head about two years old with a pair of duck's wings placed under its chin, supposed always to be flying about singing psalms."
This picture shows Hogarth’s ability to compose a vivid group of characters on the canvas, to combine harmony of form and content, preserve freshness and vitality. But still the main achievement of the painter is that he was the first to invent the story and illustrate it in a comic and satirical way.