We're in the National Gallery in London and we're looking at a set of six paintings by William Hogarth, who's best known for making prints, not paintings. 18th century is an interesting moment, especially in England and France, where we have the beginnings of the industrial... Revolution and as a result, a widening middle class that wants to buy art. You have the landed aristocracy which is in some ways beginning to lose power to a new merchant class that is becoming powerful because it's becoming wealthy. Whereas before, you had art that was serving the aristocracy, princes, monarchs, the church, we now begin to have art that is made for this growing middle class audience.
We have prints that are being sold to a wide public, and art becoming a commodity, something that large numbers of people buy. Prints are a lot less expensive than paintings. Hogarth's intent here was to use these paintings as a model for the prints that he was going to produce.
And then he would sell his prints for about a shilling a piece. Now that was more than a working class person could afford, but it was well within the means of this new middle class. So Hogarth is becoming a kind of artist entrepreneur, something that might be very familiar to us in the 21st century when art is still so closely allied to commerce, to galleries, to money making. And this is so targeted to that new middle class because it is a very deeply moral set of images, but it's also a set of images that is full of fun and makes fun of the aristocracy.
So the entire set is a set of images is known as marriage a la mode, and it's prompted by this concern in the 18th century that marriages were sometimes arranged for economic benefit rather than for love. Marriage a la mode means modern marriage or the marriage of the day. The entire series, these six paintings, tell the story of an aristocratic family named, wonderfully, the Squanderfields, suggesting that they've squandered their aristocratic fortune. And Lord Squanderfield has.
has to have his son marry the daughter of a wealthy merchant so he can maintain his estate and all his worldly possessions. And the wealthy merchant's daughter gets in return the aristocratic title. So what we have is an exchange. It is a kind of economic deal that's taking place.
It's being brokered here. So let's look at the painting. On the right, we see Lord Squanderfield. He's pointing to his family tree, which begins with a medieval knight suggesting that what he's bringing to the table is this great linden. lineage.
Over on the far left, you see his son in blue. He's picking some snuff out of a box, and he looks really like a dilettante. Well, he's actually looking in the mirror, too, sort of gazing at his own reflection.
So we have no sympathy for him whatsoever. And the woman behind him, who he's going to marry, he has his back to. He's not paying any attention to her.
This is an arranged marriage. The woman is being talked into it, someone we're going to see later in the story. His name is Silvertongue.
and he's a counselor, so clearly Hogarth is making fun of him and talking about him as a kind of smooth talker. What's interesting is the way that Lawrence Squanderfield, with his gout-ridden foot, he's situated in between the family tree and this dowry that he's being paid, and he's saying, look, I'm bringing a lot to the table here. I've got this long aristocratic lineage. This money that's piled up, this isn't even enough for me.
Well, that's because if you look out the window, he's building a new mansion, and he needs to finance that. And we see a lot of people who are lawyer at the table and we also see the merchant himself, that is that young woman's father, and they're attending to the business transaction. But the architect stares out the window at the building that he's dreaming of constructing. So everybody is in this for their own self-interest, with the exception of the young couple.
The young man, self-involved, the young woman looks inconsolable. But these two individuals will add to the disaster that is their end here. So let's move to the second canvas.
This is Tete-a-Tete, which means which means head to head, face to face. The husband has come home from a night of gambling and drinking and womanizing. So how can we tell? Well, the dog's sniffing at what looks like a woman's bonnet in his pocket.
And he looks like he hasn't slept at all. But his wife looks like she's had some fun of her own while her husband was away. Her bodice is undone. She looks flirtatious as though perhaps her lover has just left when her husband's come home.
She seems to be sick. signaling with a mirror held above her head to her lover, perhaps. The chair is overturned, an instrument is on the floor, a music book is open.
There's an implication that lovemaking has taken place here and has just ended when the husband has come home. And music was a traditional symbol of pleasure. And sensuality and lovemaking.
And in the room just past where they are, we see images of saints. So we have Hogarth commenting on the immorality ...of this couple. And to make sure that we don't miss these signals, Hogarth has placed a third figure in the foreground.
He's a kind of accountant, and you can see that he's had it. He holds receipts, he holds bills, and he's thrown his hands up. He can't... get this young couple to take their finances seriously.
And if you look at the mantelpiece, we've got all sorts of knickknacks lined up there that look like they've been recently purchased and look inexpensive and gaudy compared to this original. aristocratic environment with these oil paintings and gilded frames. Dr. That's the contrast that's important, I think, for Hogarth here. He's making this sharp distinction between these tawdry things that they've brought in, this young couple, and the classicism that is a part of this aristocratic life. Dr. The aristocracy has this reputation that they've inherited, these values that have accrued to them over centuries, but they're values that don't reflect the reality of their lives.
You can also see an addition, perhaps, perhaps a painting that the man has brought in. It's partially obscured by a curtain, and all that's visible is a nude foot. On a bed, clearly. And so this would have been a very clear signal in the 18th century to a lewd painting.
So in all of these paintings, actually, the artwork really tells a meta story. They comment on the scene that's being enacted, and we can see that right over the mantle. We have a classical sculpture, but its nose is broken, as if it had been knocked over at some party. And behind a painting of Cupid among the ruins. That is, love itself is here ruined.
Love itself has become a disaster. Let's look at the third painting. This canvas is called The Inspection, and it takes place in a doctor's office. The apothecary or the doctor on the left seems to be cleaning his glasses, which makes one worried about the kind of inspection he's going to perform. The woman behind him is obviously his assistant, but they're both clearly suffering from syphilis.
This is the woman behind him. This is an important point. Lord Squanderfield, the younger Lord Squanderfield, actually has a sign of syphilis, which is that large black form on his neck.
And we see that throughout these canvases. And so we know he is likely visiting prostitutes. He is living a life of debauchery right from the beginning and clearly infecting his young wife.
And here, clearly, has infected a young woman who he's brought with him to the doctor's office, who seems to be applying some kind of ointment to a sore on her mouth. I mean, it's just, it's ghastly. And so Hogarth is doing everything he can to remove any kind of sympathy we could possibly have for this young man. He seems to be saying to the apothecary, your medicine isn't working. Give me my money back.
Well, the woman seems to be quite angered by that, whereas the apothecary himself seems to be not particularly concerned. But look at the kind of caricature that Hogarth brings to the rendering of these figures. The apothecary himself, that's just a disreputable face.
But again, the surroundings tell us something about the figures. In the medical cabinet, we see. a model of a human figure next to a skeletal model. Even on the left side, we see a skull, which is also a symbol of death.
But no one is taking seriously the fact that they're going to die one day. In fact, the young Lord Squanderfield here seems to be in a very good mood. Let's move on to the fourth canvas. This one is called the toilet. That means here that the woman is at her dressing table.
She's having her hair done. She's getting all dressed up. She's having her makeup done.
She's surrounded by her friends. Notice that she's not with her child. We do have an indication that she's had a child because we have a string of coral beads that would have been used for teething for children, but her child is nowhere in sight.
She's not a good mother. She's hanging out with her friends instead. She's in her bedroom, and her bedroom is this very public place, which is not so uncommon for the aristocracy. But we see on the left, for a second time now, the counselor Silvertongue, and he looks right at home.
Now, this to the 18th century would have suggested that he was actually illiterate. illicitly the young woman's lover now. And remember, he was the one who was trying to talk her into the marriage to console her, and he has taken full advantage.
BETH HARRIS-And there's music making and drinking and obviously figures who are also suffering from syphilis. The figure on the far right seems to be holding tickets and pointing to an image of a masked ball. STEVEN ZUCKERMANN, The paintings on the wall that we're seeing are also important and make a kind of comment on the scene. We see paintings that are about the trespassing of norms of.
of behavior, and of course, that's exactly what this painting is about. Female Speaker 2.2 Two of the paintings on the wall are about Zeus disguising himself in order to have a love affair, and that's exactly what we're going to see actually in the next scene. Male Speaker 1.2 So here it's night.
This is the fifth painting, and here we're no longer in an aristocratic house. We're in a place of disrepute. This is the kind of room that you would hire when you didn't want anybody to know what you were doing, and what we see is the young woman on her knees.
as her lover. That would be Silvertongue. Flees out the window. He's fleeing because he has just impaled her husband with his sword.
She's besieging him, asking for forgiveness, because Silvertongue and the young woman were caught in the act. And they had clearly... been at a masked ball.
We see their discarded clothing. We see a mask. So in the last scene, Hogarth sums up by showing the death of the young woman. So now the husband and the wife are dead. The wife has died because she's poisoned.
herself when she's read in the newspaper that's at her feet that her lover, Silvertongue, has been hanged. For the murder of her husband, that's right. We see the nurse bringing her child to say goodbye to its mother. It's a terrible scene.
We also see a syphilis spot on the child's cheek, so we know that the child is sick. This couple is irredeemable. The entire practice of a marriage that's based on this kind of economic exchange instead of love is really indicted.
Well, look, her very father is taking a gold ring from her finger even as she lays dying. And the dog on the right is another symbol of greediness as it steals meat from the table. Not just meat, but a pig's head, actually. And we can see that we're back in her home. This is not the aristocratic family of the Squanderfields.
And you can see the Thames River just outside. You can see the city crowding in. And it's a reminder of the way in which London had changed so radically in the 18th century. So the great Victorian novelist, Thackeray, wrote about this set of six paintings and summed up the moral.
He wrote, And Tyburn is the place where criminals would be hanged.