Marriage A-la-Mode: 2. The Tête à Tête
painting by William Hogarth
The Tête à Tête is the second canvas in the series of six satirical paintings known as Marriage A-la-Mode, painted by William Hogarth.
Persons
The painting is the sparsest in terms of characters present, with only 4:
The Viscount – seated, on the right
The Viscountess – seated, across from her husband
The Methodist servant – walking out
The other servant – in the other room
Plot
The exact details are not always settled upon (in particular, the time of the day is one of the most disputed questions in the entire series), but the primary implication is clear: The two are totally uninterested in each other, and the marriage and the household are rapidly becoming untenable.
Details
The clock on the right shows the time as 12:20. Commentators are undecided whether this is late at night or the afternoon but in either case, the implications are damning:
If it's 12:20 in the morning, the house has clearly been the scene of a wild and debauched party; the Viscount has been out until all hours and neither are interested in each other.
If 12:20 in the afternoon, whatever occurred the night before hasn't been cleaned up, the servants are just waking up, the candles were left burning all night and into the day (including the one that is about to set the chair next to the waiter on fire), and the couple have only recently risen.
The husband looks bored, dishevelled and distracted, and has returned exhausted from what was likely a trip to a brothel: the dog has sniffed out what appears to be a lady's nightcap in his master's jacket pocket. His waistcoat is open with its buttons undone, his shirt partially untucked, and his thigh-high stockings are slipping down. The patch on the man's neck indicates that he has contracted a sexually-transmitted disease (in the first painting of the series he is already wearing the patch – before his marriage).
Lying by the husband's feet is his sword, undrawn from its scabbard but broken, alluding to his impotence, or that he was in a fight.
The husband's likeness is said to be based upon Hogarth's friend, Francis Hayman.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Marriage A-la-Mode: 2. The Tête à Tête” as painting by William Hogarth. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as painting by William Hogarth. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3944145. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Marriage A-la-Mode: 2. The Tête à Tête”, its source revision and the description used here.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Marriage A-la-Mode: 2. The Tête à Tête” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.