Marriage A-la-Mode, Plate VI: The Lady's Death - William Hogarth
Archival giclée
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Description
The final scene of William Hogarth's Marriage A-la-Mode series, depicting the tragic death of the Countess in her father's home.
This print is the final instalment of William Hogarth's six-part series, Marriage A-la-Mode. It depicts the tragic conclusion to the narrative, where the Countess Squanderfield dies in the home of her father, a wealthy merchant. The scene is set in a cramped, modest room, contrasting sharply with the opulence seen in earlier plates of the series. The Countess has taken her own life after her husband is killed in a duel, leaving her child in the care of a nurse.
Hogarth employs his characteristic satirical eye to populate the room with symbolic details. A starving dog steals food from a table, mirroring the desperate state of the household. The merchant, her father, is shown removing a ring from his dying daughter's finger, a gesture that suggests his preoccupation with material wealth even in the face of family tragedy. The window offers a view of London Bridge, grounding the scene in a specific urban reality of the eighteenth century.
The composition is dense with narrative clues. Every object, from the overturned chair to the discarded medicine bottle, contributes to the moralising tone of the work. Hogarth was a master of the visual story, using the medium of engraving to circulate his critiques of aristocratic decadence and social ambition to a wider public. This print demonstrates his technical precision in line work, which allows for the subtle rendering of textures, from the fabric of the characters' clothing to the wooden floorboards. It remains a primary example of how eighteenth-century British art engaged with contemporary social issues through a blend of drama and biting humour.
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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 printing for rich, fade-resistant colour
- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
- Multiple sizes and framing options available
- Frames in black, natural wood, dark wood or white
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- Dust gently with a soft, dry cloth
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Materials & Sizing
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, Plate VI: The Lady's Death - 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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