This Painting Trolled Everyone To Perfection

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This piece is called The Marriage Settlement and it’s part of a 6 painting series called Marriage A-la-Mode by William Hogarth. In this video, we take a journey through the entire narrative series including: The Marriage Settlement, The Tête à Tête, The Inspection, The Toilette, The Bagnio and The Lady’s Death. Hogarth came from humble beginnings and this series of paintings was his way of revealing the uncomfortable truths hiding beneath the veil of money and power. But why six paintings? Why not just one? It’s because for him, these weren't just some pretty paintings, this was personal.

Lord Squanderfield and a wealthy Alderman are negotiating an arranged marriage between their son and daughter. Things only go down hill from here...

Hogarth knew that in order to be somebody in the art world, he had to do something bold, something innovative, something no one could ignore.

And he had an idea: Make a narrative series of paintings, Turn them into engravings and sell them to the public through a subscription model. He called this new venture his “modern moral subjects”. They were quite dark, but laced with satire to make them easier to digest, with a touch of raunchiness for good measure. Hogarth’s narrative series of prints would make art accessible to everyone, not just the rich and his timing was perfect.

Hogarth's first two narrative series of prints A Harlot's Progress and A Rake's Progress sold out quickly, but none had the impact of Marriage A-la-Mode.

Hogarth created a whole new audience of art lovers and gave them something they didn’t know they needed. He even included recognizable people and locations, letting viewers interact with the art by guessing who he might be subtly mocking. He took the worst aspects of London’s society and wove it into a gripping story that was impossible to look away from. Art critic George Vertue even called him the “Shakespeare of painting.”

Despite how cynical Hogarth’s series can feel, there’s this humanity to his work. Even with the most unlikeable characters, I find myself asking: What happened to you to make you like this? He wasn’t just showing people’s flaws; he was showing the larger forces at play that shaped them to be the way they are. His ability to bring his characters to life, to show cause and effect, is a testament to his storytelling brilliance. It seems like he had a deep understanding of the characters he depicted and that’s because… he did. Hogarth had lived on the fringes of society, he rubbed shoulders with the wealthy. But the greed of the rich and powerful really seemed to bug him.

Hogarth gained wealth and recognition during his lifetime, but ironically. the satirical paintings that made him so successful were also what kept him from being taken seriously by the art establishment. And despite Hogarth’s disdain for the art establishment, he desperately wanted to be accepted by it. He longed to be seen as a painter of “high art”. He even created some more serious history paintings but they flopped.

Today, he’s thought of as the first of the English masters, the person who put British art on the map and the grandfather of things like modern comics and political cartoons.

There are so many scrumptious details in these paintings. Let me know if you notice any that I missed in the comments below!

references/credits:

Smoke effect from Vecteezy

[rgibson]

In the third painting, the Inspection, the skull on the desk...has syphilis. Those erosions in the frontal bone--that's what syphilis does to your skull.

[Naharu.]

Ngl, I love the idea of an entire soap opera presented in paintings

[Misster]

As a comic artist I cant believe I didnt know about Hogarth before, it feels like he was a founding father. Nothing but respect for him

[Tinyflypie]

Passing cloth through a ring was a test of quality, especially in the case of muslin. At the time of this painting an extremely expensive muslin from northern india was called woven air. It's said to be the finest cloth with the highest thread count. The bride is wearing this extremly expensive cloth and her handkerchief is also made from it. It is demonstrating how wealthy she is and perhaps that she is as fine and delicate as the cloth

[isabellaeid]

So you’re telling me there have been telenovelas in painting format and it took me this long to find that out?!?! I need more of this!!!

[lc]

Best conclusion ever: "we still don't deserve dogs".

[SARANYAAADAK]

I adore this concept. Its similar to something in Eastern India called 'Patachitra', where over a hundred paintings on cloth would depict scenes of an epic, narrated by a storyteller in a ballad, as he rolls the cloth open gradually. It attracts a huge crowd at festivals.

[KimberlyLetsGo]

The man be accused of providing the Laudanum looks like her hairdresser from a previous painting. I see the comb in his hair in both paintings.
Women have, for centuries, poured their deepest secrets to their hairdressers/wig dressers, I guess.
Hogarth sort of was a very early comic artist painting serial story paintings that he created over time.

[C-SD]

The bust at 08:19, there was a surgery to "repair" your nose. The final product looked kind of like that. Apparently syphilis frequently made your nose fall off.

[skybluskyblueify]

A semi-healthy pug! Glad the artist liked the little character founts. He's lucky the dogs hadn't yet become the poor gremlins that can barely breathe of today. There's so much to learn from old paintings. Glad I found this channel.

[RoxanneLaWinSTABBY]

The handkerchief through the ring isn’t a ‘fidget’ mechanism, it’s referring to handkerchief signalling, a form of sign language younger people would use in the era to flirt, or quite the opposite. A few sources say to drag your handkerchief through your hand while looking at the intended message recipient, say ‘I hate/dislike you’. In this instance, pulling it through your ring, would be saying ‘I hate my marriage/husband’. Savage af.

A lot of us in Britain *have* heard of Hogarth, and he’s treasured here, as a satirist, champion of the underclasses/the less fortunate, and to top it all off to a modern audience: the inventor of the comic strip.

[weirdyyy]

I have never recognised that it was a proper series with reoccurring characters! Thank you for introducing us to these exciting and expertly done paintings!

[adriennedunne]

The black and white sketch with the drunken woman dropping her baby is called Gin Lane. This is about the Gin epidemics back then when a lot of peoples lives were ruined by excessive consumption of gin. In it, the pawn broker and the undertaker are doing very well with other businesses going broke. There's another picture, not shown here, which is the reverse story called Beer Street. In this, people are drinking beer, not gin. Beer was supposed to be better for one. The undertaker and the pawnbroker are now the ones going broke as people are now healthier cause they're not drinking gin any longer. 😂 that's the way it was. Spirits were considered to be a greater evil than beer, which had been drunk for centuriese as it was safer than drinking the water. I love Hogarth. He had a great sense of humour and compassion. A great painter 😊

[birersuitt]

So this is what people did before TV existed 😭 i enjoyed this thoroughly, great job ❤

[JClover]

I'm surprised EVERYONE didn't have syphilis! That poor girl! 😢

[Whyamiherell]

As an art history graduate I’m so happy you’re reminding people that history is better than written drama and that painting are entire WORLDS

[josephhargrove]

I'm so glad you brought William Hogarth to your viewer's attention. As a contemporary of Swift, Addison & Steele, and Daniel Defoe, he brought the flowering of 18th century English satire to the visual arts. I've always appreciated his engravings since being introduced to them in English Literature class.
richard
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[inisipisTV]

I'm a retired art director, William Hogarth is one the giants in Illustrative Narrative Art, hold highly by Animators and Comic artist, sorely unrecognized by most art schools.

[kitsicatz]

HIS PAINTING SKILLS ARE AMAZING HOW IS HE SELF TAUGHT 😭

[matthewb]

"Oh No. Not again!" 0:17 - You know this is going to be a good story. Love the videos.