Uncertainty

This touching picture would have resonated deeply with Victorian audiences, and commemorates a tradition still observed today. In a distant room, a suitor is asking an elderly gentleman for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The daughter listens expectantly, visible to us but not them, her apprehension calmed by the presence of an adoring hound. The scene is bathed in soft afternoon light, and her dress suggests autumn to add pathos to the scene. A ticking grandfather clock further marks the passage of time. The black and white tiled floor that leads the eye through the picture recalls the interiors of Dutch 17th century painting and the picture exudes the stillness and serenity of a Vermeer. Despite the title, the viewer is left in no doubt that the outcome will be a happy one.
Before the introduction of the moving image, audiences loved to comment on and interpret the nuances of narrative suggested by painters in scenes such as this. Hughes had made his name through depicting the romantic life of couples in pictures such as April Love (1855-6, Tate, London) and The Long Engagement (1854-9, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery). As a friend and associate of the Pre-Raphaelites (although never officially a brother), he observed Millais’s success in depicting the heightened emotion between couples in The Black Brunswicker (1860, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and The Huguenot (1852, Private Collection).
The picture’s theatrical qualities were appreciated by an early owner Sylvester Zefferini Poli (1859-1937) who by 1916 became the most successful theatre owner in the United States, with more than thirty premises in his portfolio. Hughes would have had a willing model to act as the lead protagonist. The head is that of his daughter who married within a few years of this picture being painted. Hughes’ imagination perhaps pre-empted his son in law’s interview.