This Painting Trolled Everyone To Perfection

Try Rocket Money for free: http://rocketmoney.com/artdeco Thank you Rocket Money for sponsoring this video! 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: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/william-hogarth-marriage-a-la-mode-1-the-marriage-settlement https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/william-hogarth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hogarth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_A-la-Mode_(Hogarth) Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris, "William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode," in Smarthistory, December 11, 2015, accessed January 11, 2025, https://smarthistory.org/william-hogarth-marriage-a-la-mode/. https://youtu.be/fZGwqGmBcBQ?si=UmmeEwN3_ubBlMlI Divertissement by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Smoke effect from Vecteezy