Marriage a-la-mode: 2. The Tete à Tete

In addition to being a painter, William Hogarth was a satirist and social critic. He is the author of series of moral works, this painting being one of them. Marriage à-la-mode skewers upper class society of the time (1743). This moralistic warning shows the catastrophic results of an ill-considered marriage for money and satirizes the institution of patronage. Scary.