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The Wedding of Stephen Beckingham and Mary Cox

1729
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 630
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.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: The Wedding of Stephen Beckingham and Mary Cox
  • Artist: William Hogarth (British, London 1697–1764 London)
  • Date: 1729
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 50 1/2 x 40 1/2 in. (128.3 x 102.9 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Marquand Fund, 1936
  • Object Number: 36.111
  • Curatorial Department: European Paintings

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