William Hogarth , Marriage à la mode , The marriage settlement (1748)

William  Hogarth , Marriage à la mode , The marriage settlement (1748)

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This painting entitled the marriage settlement belongs to a series of paintings called Marriage a la mode , realized between 1743 and 1745 , by William hogarth , this one represents an arranged marriage between a wealthy merchant’s daughter and a bankrupted aristocrat’s son called Lord Squanderfield.

The scene indicates to the viewer a lot of details that might seems meaningless but in reality they explains the whole context

First of all , the bride and the groom are sitting back to back and the groom is looking into a mirror, the  empty space in between them looks like the letter V and it refers to emotional and physical distance , one of the features of the vision of society concerning weddings  

Near the bride we can see the lawyer , he seems to invites this young lady to sign a wedding settlement with his quill, on the opposite side of the painting that is to say on the right part , we can see a massive wood table with chairs , on the left we can recognize the wealthy merchant with his solemn attitude and his feets well planted on the floor that evokes his great wealth and high social position and in front of him Lord Squanderfield with a lazy attitude , he ‘s laying unsightly in his chair with his legs crossed , this indicates his low economical status and  He’s showing to his fellow his family tree which he’s very proud of.

Finally , as it concerns the setting , the scene takes place in Lord squanderfield’s palace , the room seems luxiouriously furnished and decorated but if we look carefully to the window in the background we can see that the palace isn’t finish at all and also that nobody is working on the scaffolding because he doesn’t earn enough money to pay them . So in fact ,he hopes to bail out  his debts thanks to this marriage

Last but not least we can see a black spot on the groom’s neck , at the time this indicated that the person with this spot was a bearer of sexual diseases.

Nowadays , this details seems insignificant but in the eighteenth century people immediately understood and this let the viewer to know the dramatic destiny reserved to this young lady ( in fact is because this man was going around with prostitutes)

To conclude we can say that this painting emphasizes on the fact that weddings weren’t a matter of love but more a beneficial decision for the  family , and most of the times it was concerning economic interests or a way to avoid mixing the family with lower social classes.

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