The Unequal Marriage (1862), is a painting depicting the wedding ceremony of an elderly, high-ranking official and a young, visibly unhappy girl. This was one of the celebrated denunciatory pictures of the 1860s, revealing the unequal position of women and the corruption of bureaucracy. This critical mode, reflecting the general striving for reform in Russia after the Emancipation reform of 1861, was intended to arouse the dormant social conscience and change society. The Unequal Marriage is currently on display at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, Russia.
Read more about this topic: Vasili Pukirev
Famous quotes containing the words unequal and/or marriage:
“A distinction of property results from that very protection which a free Government gives to unequal faculties of acquiring it.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“If a marriage is going to work well, it must be on a solid footing, namely money, and of that commodity it is the girl with the smallest dowry who, to my knowledge, consumes the most, to infuriate her husband. All the same, it is only fair that the marriage should pay for past pleasures, since it will scarcely procure any in the future.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)