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The marriage

1998
Not on view
This exceptionally lush print has a humble source: the discarded photograph of a young Japanese couple on their wedding day that Hamilton found nearly thirty years earlier in Hamburg. The subject recalls Jan van Eyck’s famous Arnolfini Portrait (1434; National Gallery, London), about which Hamilton wrote: “[It] does embody all that I most admire in art: incredible technical mastery (in a medium that van Eyck was himself inventing) set to the service of an arcane symbolism that moves its audience with profound simplicity. It is an epiphany, a crystallization of thought that gives us an instant awareness of life’s meaning.”

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: The marriage
  • Artist: Richard Hamilton (British, London 1922–2011 Oxfordshire)
  • Date: 1998
  • Medium: Inkjet (Iris) print
  • Edition: 22/25 + 3 artist's proofs
  • Dimensions: 35 1/4 × 26 1/2 in. (89.5 × 67.3 cm)
  • Classification: Prints
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Reba and Dave Williams Gift, 2000
  • Object Number: 2000.149
  • Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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Swingeing London 67, Richard Hamilton British, Etching, aquatint, photoetching, and collage, embossed and die stamped with metallic foil
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