Six Stages of Marring a Face

A man's head and shoulders are repeated here six times, suffering progressive injuries during a boxing match. At upper right the subject is handsome, muscular and unscathed, but ends up bleeding and unconscious at lower left. Rowlandson's dedication in the lower margin connects the image to Douglas Hamilton, 8th Duke of Hamilton, a Scottish peer who inherited his title as a teenager. An extended European educational tour of Europe did little to suppress an impulsive nature and, soon after returning to England, the twenty-one year old duke married against his mother's wishes–the union was marred by multiple infidelities and ended in divorce. Andrew Steptoe notes that the duke was considered "one of the handsomest men of his day...[but] gradually gave way to dissipation. He was fond of boxing and low company." Rowlandson's image uses boxing metaphorically to suggest the duke's cumulative self-imposed difficulties. Sadly, seven years after this print was published, he died at age forty-three.