Marriage A-la-Mode: 2, The Tête à Tête - William Hogarth
Archival giclée
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Description
The second plate from William Hogarth's Marriage A-la-Mode series, depicting a scene of domestic exhaustion and financial neglect in eighteenth-century London.
This print is the second plate from William Hogarth's six-part series, Marriage A-la-Mode. It depicts the morning scene in the home of the Viscount and his wife, following a night of separate dissipation. The Viscount sits in a chair, exhausted, with a dog sniffing at a cap protruding from his pocket, suggesting a recent romantic encounter elsewhere. His wife sits opposite him, stretching with a look of boredom, while a steward departs in the background, holding a stack of unpaid bills.
Hogarth uses the setting to convey moral commentary. The room is filled with signs of excess and neglect. A musical instrument lies on the floor, and a book of music is discarded, indicating the superficiality of their interests. The mantelpiece is cluttered with kitsch ornaments, and the paintings on the wall include a religious subject partially obscured by a curtain, contrasting with the secular chaos below. The steward, clutching a single receipt, represents the financial ruin that follows such profligate behaviour.
Technically, the work demonstrates Hogarth's mastery of the etched line. He employs varied hatching to define the textures of the carpet, the upholstery, and the clothing of the figures. The composition is structured to guide the eye from the central couple to the retreating steward, effectively narrating the domestic discord. This print serves as a critique of the arranged marriages common among the eighteenth-century aristocracy, where status and wealth were prioritised over personal compatibility. The scene is devoid of warmth, capturing a moment of profound alienation between two people bound by contract rather than affection. Through his precise draughtsmanship, Hogarth transforms a domestic interior into a stage for social observation, documenting the habits and failings of his contemporaries with sharp, observational clarity.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
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Specific Features
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Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
Marriage A-la-Mode: 2, The Tête à Tête - William Hogarth
Artist Biography
William Hogarth
He was born in Smithfield, London, near the meat market. His father, a schoolteacher, was imprisoned for debt when William was a child. The experience of debtors' prison appears throughout his work. He apprenticed to a silver engraver and taught himself painting by copying old masters and observing London street life with the attention of a novelist.
He was shrewd about money and copyright. The Engraving Copyright Act of 1735 ('Hogarth's Act') was passed largely through his lobbying. It gave printmakers legal ownership of their designs for the first time, preventing pirated copies. He was protecting his income: the popular prints were his main revenue source.
He painted portraits, historical scenes, and the extraordinary Shrimp Girl, an unfinished head study of a street vendor that anticipates Impressionism by a century. The brushwork is loose, fresh, and immediate. It does not look like anything else painted in the 1740s. He also wrote The Analysis of Beauty (1753), a treatise on aesthetics that argued beauty derived from serpentine lines, which was mocked but was not wrong.
He died in 1764, at sixty-six. He is buried in Chiswick, west London. His tomb has a modest inscription. His influence on British satirical art, from Gillray to Banksy, has no inscription and no end.
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