Template:POTD/2020-04-22

Picture of the day

The Marriage Settlement is the first of a series of six oil-on-canvas paintings by English painter and pictorial satirist William Hogarth, created around 1743. The series, entitled Marriage A-la-Mode, depicts an arranged marriage and its disastrous consequences in a satire of 18th-century society, and is now in the collection of the National Gallery, London.

In this painting, a marriage is being arranged between the son of the bankrupt Earl Squanderfield and the daughter of a wealthy but miserly city merchant. Construction on the earl's new mansion, visible through the window, has stopped, and a usurer negotiates payment for further construction at the table in the centre. The gouty earl proudly points to a picture of his family tree, originating with William the Conqueror. The son views himself in a mirror, showing where his interests in the matter lie. The distraught merchant's daughter is consoled by the lawyer Silvertongue while polishing her wedding ring. Even the faces in the portraits on the walls appear to have misgivings. Two dogs chained to each other in the corner mirror the situation of the young couple.Painting credit: William Hogarth