Marriage A-la-Mode: 6, The Lady's Death

This is the final scene of Hogarth’s series of six paintings, Marriage A-la-Mode. The wretched Countess, dogged by the scandal following Silvertongue’s arrest, trial and sentence to death for the murder of her husband the Earl, has returned to her father’s house in the City of London.

On receiving news that Silvertongue has been hanged at Tyburn, the Countess has drunk laudanum; the bottle lies empty on the floor. An old nurse lifts the Countess’s child – deformed by congenital syphilis – to kiss her goodbye. The penny-pinching Alderman removes a ring from his daughter’s finger rather than offering comfort as she takes her final breaths.

The doctor wanders out behind the Alderman – there’s nothing more he can do. He appears to admire the whole row of fire buckets hanging on the wall in the hallway. The Alderman, unlike his dying daughter, never starts a fire he can't extinguish.

Text: © The National Gallery, London

Painting photographed in its frame by Google Arts and Culture, 2023.