Marriage à la Mode: The Death of the Earl

The influential British artist William Hogarth created the narrative engraving Marriage à la Mode: The Death of the Earl in 1745. This work serves as the sixth and final plate in the iconic series, "Marriage à la Mode," a visual satire that savagely critiqued the fashionable arranged marriages and moral decay prevalent among the aristocracy of the United Kingdom during the mid-eighteenth century. Hogarth initially produced the series as oil paintings between 1743 and 1745, but quickly realized the commercial and educational potential of distributing the story widely through high-quality prints.

This final scene depicts the catastrophic climax of the young Earl’s dissolute life. Following a duel or illicit rendezvous, the Earl lies dying, having consumed poison, surrounded by the remnants of his failed marriage and ruined moral standing. True to Hogarth’s detailed, moralizing visual narratives, the setting is meticulously filled with clues indicating the couple's financial ruin and social failure. The dramatic composition utilizes the exaggerated staging characteristic of the artist's work, capturing the emotional intensity of the tragedy as it fully consumes the main characters.

As an engraving, this piece was carefully rendered to translate the complex details and contrasts effectively from the painted source, allowing for the widespread distribution that cemented Hogarth's reputation as a master visual satirist and progenitor of the sequential narrative. This exemplary impression of the work is held in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The widespread availability of these influential 18th-century compositions means that prints of this series often reside within the public domain, ensuring global access for study and appreciation.