Inscription:

Unique proof

Tony, A very happy millennium with lots of love

‘After Hogarth’ was the pastel triptych Paula made for Richard Morphet’s wonderful Encounters exhibition at the National Gallery in 2000. The rule of the game was that the painters had to choose a painting in the National Gallery and do something “after” it. Paula chose ‘Mariage à la Mode’, Hogarth’s famous satire which she knew well and created three paintings followed by prints – Hogarth himself made six paintings followed by engravings. The present work, the third, shows the errant, supposedly repentant, husband. Here I am centre stage in a classic pieta pose, with a third figure in attendance, who is not present in the corresponding painting. I am in a similar pieta pose in the middle picture of another triptych from the same year, ‘Martha, Mary and Magdalene’. That picture nods to Rogier van der Weyden’s ‘Magdalene Reading’, in the National Gallery.