Editing William Hogarth (section)

====''Marriage A-la-Mode''====
[[File:Marriage A-la-Mode 4, The Toilette - William Hogarth.jpg|thumbnail|''Marriage à-la-mode'', ''[[Marriage à-la-mode: 4. The Toilette|After the old Earl's funeral]]'' (scene four of six)]]

In 1743–1745, Hogarth painted the six pictures of ''[[Marriage A-la-Mode (Hogarth)|Marriage A-la-Mode]]'' ([[National Gallery, London]]),<ref>Robert L. S. Cowley, ''Marriage A-la-Mode: a re-view of Hogarth's narrative art'' (Manchester University Press, 1983); Judy Egerton, ''Hogarth's 'Marriage A-la-Mode{{'}}'', London: The National Gallery 1997.</ref> a pointed skewering of upper-class 18th-century society. An engraved version of the same series, produced by French engravers, appeared in 1745.<ref>Paulson, ''Hogarth's Graphic Works'', 3rd edition, nos. 158-163.</ref><ref>[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12984 Print series in detail]</ref> This moralistic warning shows the miserable tragedy of an ill-considered marriage for money. This is regarded by many as his finest project and may be among his best-planned story serials.

Marital ethics were the topic of much debate in 18th-century Britain. The many marriages of convenience and their attendant unhappiness came in for particular criticism, with a variety of authors taking the view that love was a much sounder basis for marriage. Hogarth here painted a satire – a genre that by definition has a moral point to convey – of a conventional marriage within the English upper class. All the paintings were engraved and the series achieved wide circulation in print form. The series, which is set in a Classical interior, shows the story of the fashionable marriage of Viscount Squanderfield, the son of bankrupt Earl Squander, to the daughter of a wealthy but miserly city merchant, starting with the signing of a marriage contract at the Earl's grand house and ending with the murder of the son by his wife's lover and the suicide of the daughter after her lover is hanged at [[Tyburn, London|Tyburn]] for murdering her husband.

[[William Makepeace Thackeray]] wrote: {{blockquote|This famous set of pictures contains the most important and highly wrought of the Hogarth comedies. The care and method with which the moral grounds of these pictures are laid is as remarkable as the wit and skill of the observing and dexterous artist. He has to describe the negotiations for a marriage pending between the daughter of a rich citizen Alderman and young Lord Viscount Squanderfield, the dissipated son of a gouty old Earl ... The dismal end is known. My lord draws upon the counsellor, who kills him, and is apprehended while endeavouring to escape. My lady goes back perforce to the Alderman of the City, and faints upon reading Counsellor Silvertongue's dying speech at Tyburn (place of execution in old London), where the counsellor has been 'executed for sending his lordship out of the world. Moral: don't listen to evil silver-tongued counsellors; don't marry a man for his rank, or a woman for her money; don't frequent foolish auctions and masquerade balls unknown to your husband; don't have wicked companions abroad and neglect your wife, otherwise you will be run through the body, and ruin will ensue, and disgrace, and Tyburn.<ref>Thackeray, William Makepeace, ''The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century''.</ref>}}