Hogarth On High Life

Marriage a la Mode is the most famous of William Hogarth s progresses or series paintings, the story of a marriage de convenance and its unhappy consequences in fashionable 18th-century London. Contemporaries relished teasing out the meaning of all its rich detail, and the most extensive and popular of all the commentaries on the artist s accomplishment: was that of the witty, many-sided German, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Brilliantly translated, thoroughly annotated, this text is accompanied by the earlier and less-known commentary by Hogarth s friend, the French-Swiss enameller Jean-Andre Rouquet, and by a selection of Lichtenberg s remarks (in letters to friends) on his purposes and problems in interpreting Hogarth s work. Included also is another and very rare explanation of the plates, an anonymous 1746 pamphlet titled Marriage A-la-Mode-An Humorous Tale, in Six Cantos. A foreword on Lichtenberg, and an historical essay on Hogarth s work by Mr. Coley, supply necessary background on artist and commentary. Of Hogarth s greatness there is little that need be said. But it is worth noting that, of his several progresses or modern moral subjects , only Marriage a la Mode centres on the upper levels of British society - the aristocracy and the mercantile class.