The Wedding of Stephen Beckingham and Mary Cox
William Hogarth
1729 · Oil on canvas · European Paintings
This depiction of a wedding is one of the artist’s first attempts in the fashionable genre of the conversation piece, a type of group portrait. Beckingham, a London lawyer, and his bride are flanked by members of their families. The setting is based on St. Martin-in-the-Fields, a church in Trafalgar Square, not the actual venue where the wedding took place. The solemn event depicted here gave Hogarth less opportunity for satirical humor than the “modern moral subjects” that made him famous.
- Artist
- William Hogarth
- Date
- 1729
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Department
- European Paintings
- Credit line
- Marquand Fund, 1936
