Marriage A-la-Mode: 2. The Tête à Tête

Around 1743 Hogarth painted a set of six scenes tracking a marriage arranged for money between an earl's son and a rich merchant's daughter. This is the second, the morning after. It is late in the day and the room is a wreck. The husband slumps in a chair, spent, a woman's cap spilling from his coat pocket where the little dog has found it. His wife stretches at the table after her own night of cards, the two of them turned away from each other. A steward walks off in despair with a fistful of unpaid bills. Look at the small black patch on the husband's neck, a sign of the disease he already carried before the wedding. Hogarth had the series engraved so ordinary Londoners could buy the prints and read the whole story.