Título: William Hogarth
Seção: Marriage a-la-mode
Background: William Hogarth was born at Bartholomew Close in London to Richard Hogarth, a poor Latin school teacher and textbook writer, and Anne Gibbons. In his youth he was apprenticed to the engraver Ellis Gamble in Leicester Fields, where he learned to engrave trade cards and similar products. Young Hogarth also took a lively interest in the street life of the metropolis and the London fairs, and amused himself by sketching the characters he saw. Around the same time, his father, who had opened an unsuccessful Latin-speaking coffee house at St John's Gate, was imprisoned for debt in Fleet Prison for five years.

Conteúdo: In 1743-1745, Hogarth painted the six pictures of Marriage a-la-mode (National Gallery, London), a pointed skewering of upper-class 18th-century society. This moralistic warning shows the miserable tragedy of an ill-considered marriage for money. This is regarded by many as his finest project and may be among his best-planned story serials.  Marital ethics were the topic of much debate in 18th-century Britain. The many marriages of convenience and their attendant unhappiness came in for particular criticism, with a variety of authors taking the view that love was a much sounder basis for marriage. Hogarth here painted a satire - a genre that by definition has a moral point to convey - of a conventional marriage within the English upper class. All the paintings were engraved and the series achieved wide circulation in print form. The series, which is set in a Classical interior, shows the story of the fashionable marriage of Viscount Squanderfield, the son of bankrupt Earl Squander, to the daughter of a wealthy but miserly city merchant, starting with the signing of a marriage contract at the Earl's mansion and ending with the murder of the son by his wife's lover and the suicide of the daughter after her lover is hanged at Tyburn for murdering her husband.  William Makepeace Thackeray wrote:  This famous set of pictures contains the most important and highly wrought of the Hogarth comedies. The care and method with which the moral grounds of these pictures are laid is as rema

user: What does marriage a la mode mean?

assistant: In 1743-1745, Hogarth painted the six pictures of Marriage a-la-mode (National Gallery, London), a pointed skewering of upper-class 18th-century society.

user: Was this a popular piece?

assistant: This is regarded by many as his finest project and may be among his best-planned story serials.

user: Did he receive any recogniziton?

assistant: Marital ethics were the topic of much debate in 18th-century Britain. The many marriages of convenience and their attendant unhappiness came in for particular criticism,

user: What criticisms?

assistant: marriage contract at the Earl's mansion and ending with the murder of the son by his wife's lover and the suicide of the daughter after her lover is hanged

user: What happened after that?

assistant: The care and method with which the moral grounds of these pictures are laid is as remarkable as the wit and skill of the observing and dexterous artist.

user: What else is notable?

assistant: Moral: don't listen to evil silver-tongued counselors; don't marry a man for his rank, or a woman for her money;