Very rare first issue print from Marriage-a-la-Mode by William Hogarth, Plate 1

Size:  Full sheet 46.5 x 38.5 cm.  The print is trimmed to the platemark.

Condition:  Overall in good condition, with no water staining, tears or creasing. The print has some age toning and small patches of surface wear consistent with its age. It is on stout laid paper, consistent with that known to have been used for the publication to subscribers.

This very scarce print is a first issue of this work by William Hogarth, the first plate of a series of 6 which Hogarth published after his own paintings.

The prints were originally issued to subscribers, and this is one of those issued. It is the 5th state of the print, the earlier ones all  proofs before publication. See Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works, 1989, page 114 et seq. for further detail.

Hogarth, unusually, engaged French engravers to engrave the series, for this print Gerard Jean-Baptiste Scotin. It would appear that this print is exactly as engraved by Scotin. Subsequently, for later issues, Hogarth himself made a few minor but significant changes. 

Hogarth made the paintings for the prints with a view to the publication of the print series - this was how he intended to make most of his money.  For that reason he made the paintings in reverse, so that the prints show the true reading of the series.  The narrative series shows the disastrous results of an ill-considered marriage for money or social status, and satirises patronage and aesthetics. 

The exact number of prints made in the first subscription edition of "Marriage" is not known, but it was probably between 1000 and 2000 (of each print in the set). Many of these original prints, which were designed to be displayed on the wall, have been spoilt or lost, and original first issues are therefore extremely rare. 

Prints continued to be issued from Hogarth's plates into the 19th century, but there is a level of detail, particularly in the finer parts of the engraving such as the detail of the pictures on the wall, which simply does not exist in later prints, made after the plates had been used many times.