The stage is clear for the Countess and her lover
Excerpt from the book 'What Great Paintings Say Vol. II' by Rose-Marie & Rainer Hagen
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The father might have addressed the same words to the young woman at her dressing table, her face turned towards her consoler, while the hairdresser tests the heat of the curling tongs on a piece of paper-the wife as the instrument by which the family can rise to the nobility. The husband, for his part, was nothing better than an instrument of financial gain; he is saving his family from ruin. Such was a "marriage a-la-mode". The suffix "a-la-mode" literally means "according to the fashion", but implied that although it might be what everyone did, it wasn't good.
Sweet talk and sweet music
The bourgeois daughter who has risen to the aristocracy is here copying a royal ritual, the lever du roi, which was particularly cultivated at the French court. The royal morning toilette unfolded in two phases. The king was joined for the petit lever by his most senior officials, who gave him the day's news. While they talked to him, the king was given his dressing gown, was shaved and powdered, and relieved himself on his commode. This was followed by the grand lever, a more public morning reception, during which the king took his chocolate, was given his wig and dressed.
Countess Squander (Hogarth's names are self-explanatory) is staging a sort of grand lever. She has already spent money: she has been to an auction, and the bits and pieces she has purchased are standing and lying in the bottom right-hand part of the painting. She is wearing a morning gown, and the watch in her lap reads two o'clock. When the hairdresser has completed his task, she will put on a visiting gown, probably climb into her carriage and go and pay calls on her circle of acquaintances. Visiting was amongst the permitted distractions in the boring life of a lady. The numerous invitations scattered beneath the singer's chair, most of them written on the back of playing cards, serve to indicate that this was part of the daily routine. In the evening it would then be time to put on one's finery and go out to the theatre or a ball, at least during the social season. Over the summer months, the rich left their London town houses and went off to their country estates-where others earned the landed gentry their income.
The singer is probably a castrato-a man who makes up in lavish clothing for what he lacks elsewhere. He wears rings on his ear and on all his visible fingers, diamonds in his tie-pin and diamond-encrusted buckles on his knee and shoes. His silken waistcoat strains to contain his bloated body. Castrati aroused quite extraordinary passions. The woman reaching out her arms seems to want to sink at his feet. For Hogarth, however, he is but another figure of ridicule. The painter thereby took care to distance his own characters from such celebrated real-life castrati as Senesino and Farinello: "None of the Characters represented shall be personal", he announced. He had no wish to stir up trouble amongst his musician contemporaries and find himself being taken to court.
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Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
The father might have addressed the same words to the young woman at her dressing table, her face turned towards her consoler, while the hairdresser tests the heat of the curling tongs on a piece of paper-the wife as the instrument by which the family can rise to the nobility. The husband, for his part, was nothing better than an instrument of financial gain; he is saving his family from ruin. Such was a "marriage a-la-mode". The suffix "a-la-mode" literally means "according to the fashion", but implied that although it might be what everyone did, it wasn't good.
Sweet talk and sweet music
The bourgeois daughter who has risen to the aristocracy is here copying a royal ritual, the lever du roi, which was particularly cultivated at the French court. The royal morning toilette unfolded in two phases. The king was joined for the petit lever by his most senior officials, who gave him the day's news. While they talked to him, the king was given his dressing gown, was shaved and powdered, and relieved himself on his commode. This was followed by the grand lever, a more public morning reception, during which the king took his chocolate, was given his wig and dressed.
Countess Squander (Hogarth's names are self-explanatory) is staging a sort of grand lever. She has already spent money: she has been to an auction, and the bits and pieces she has purchased are standing and lying in the bottom right-hand part of the painting. She is wearing a morning gown, and the watch in her lap reads two o'clock. When the hairdresser has completed his task, she will put on a visiting gown, probably climb into her carriage and go and pay calls on her circle of acquaintances. Visiting was amongst the permitted distractions in the boring life of a lady. The numerous invitations scattered beneath the singer's chair, most of them written on the back of playing cards, serve to indicate that this was part of the daily routine. In the evening it would then be time to put on one's finery and go out to the theatre or a ball, at least during the social season. Over the summer months, the rich left their London town houses and went off to their country estates-where others earned the landed gentry their income.
The singer is probably a castrato-a man who makes up in lavish clothing for what he lacks elsewhere. He wears rings on his ear and on all his visible fingers, diamonds in his tie-pin and diamond-encrusted buckles on his knee and shoes. His silken waistcoat strains to contain his bloated body. Castrati aroused quite extraordinary passions. The woman reaching out her arms seems to want to sink at his feet. For Hogarth, however, he is but another figure of ridicule. The painter thereby took care to distance his own characters from such celebrated real-life castrati as Senesino and Farinello: "None of the Characters represented shall be personal", he announced. He had no wish to stir up trouble amongst his musician contemporaries and find himself being taken to court.
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Marriage A-la-Mode, 4, Detail 2 ("Sweet talk and sweet music")