Very rare 1745 first issue print, William Hogarth, Marriage-a-la-Mode Plate 2

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

Condition:  Overall in very good condition, with no water staining, some short repaired tears to the bottom margin. The print has some  toning 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 second 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 2nd known state of the print, the first being a proof before letters.  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 Bernard Baron. It would appear that this print shows the original engraving by Baron.  Significantly, the print omits a lock of hair on the wife's face which is in Hogarth's painting.  Some first issue copies show the lock inked in, and one can imagine Hogarth's annoyance at the omission!  In this copy there is a faint suggestion that the lock may have been added in ink or pencil which has since more or less disappeared.   For later issues,  Hogarth himself engraved the missing lock of hair. Some further minor changes were also made later by Hogarth, at unknown dates.

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.