The Babylonian Marriage Market is an 1875 painting by the British painter Edwin Long. It depicts a scene from Herodotus' Histories of young women being auctioned into marriage in the area then known as Babylon or Assyria. It received attention for its provocative depiction of women. Long's use of historical detail to make the painting engaging yet relatable has been highly regarded.Bohrer, "Inventing Assyria: Exoticism and Reception in Nineteenth-Century England and France", 351–353 The work was purchased by Thomas Holloway in 1882 and is owned by Royal Holloway, University of London.
Artist's background Edwin Long was a portrait painter who was highly reclusive, shying away from public appearances and publicity.M.H. Speilman, “Painters in their Studios”, The Graphic, June 9, 188, 21Imogen Hart, “The Politics of Possession: Edwin Long’s Babylonian Marriage Market.” Art history 35, no. 1 (2012): 104Imogen Hart, “The Politics of Possession: Edwin Long’s Babylonian Marriage Market.” Art history 35, no. 1 (2012): 87 He is noted to have painted more large-scale paintings than any of his peers from the Royal Academy of Arts. Long was inspired by cultural artefacts, people and historical writings for his subject matter; the Histories of Herodotus inspired The Babylonian Marriage Market. His sketches of Spanish life during travels in Spain were received well by the art audience and academics of the time. This increased his public profile. The increased notability helped to establish Long within the English Royal Art Academy.
As his career and productivity increased, The Babylonian Marriage Market was shown at the Royal Academy, selling for 6,605 pounds, the largest price a modern painting had ever been sold at the time.Frederick N. Bohrer, “Inventing Assyria: Exoticism and Reception in Nineteenth-Century England and France,” Vol. 80, No. 2 (1998): 352 This success as well as his persisting interest in Egyptian History led to further travels including Egypt in his later years. Long was selected as a Royal Academician in 1876 and 1881.
Historical context
Women's movement
Edwin Long is thought to have conceived the painting in direct response to creation of the new laws centred around women's ownership and the ongoing women's suffrage movement.Imogen Hart. "The Politics of Possession: Edwin Long’s Babylonian Marriage Market". Art History 35, no. 1 (2012): 96. The Married Women's Property Act 1870 gave women the right to retain property even once they were married. This was regarded as significant as prior to the law property of a married woman would be immediately given to the husband.Mary Lyndon Shanley. "Equal Rights and Spousal Friendship: The Married Women’s Property Act of 1870". In Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England, 1850–1895 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), p. 23. Holloway College notes that while this law was a significant improvement from the previous one, many women remained uncontented and demanded greater reform.
Audience exposure to Assyrian/Babylonian artefacts and artwork Bohrer, a leading Art Historian and Archaeologist notes that The Babylonian Marriage Market was ground-breaking in Long's use of Western painting tradition and Eastern myth.Bohrer, “Inventing Assyria: Exoticism and Reception in Nineteenth-Century England and France,” 351 The English artistic audience of the time had been exposed to Babylonian / Assyrian subject matter on a range of earlier occasions.Frederick N. Bohrer, “Inventing Assyria: Exoticism and Reception in Nineteenth-Century England and France,” The Art Bulletin Vol. 80, No. 2 (1998): 350
The painting
Painting information The Babylonian Marriage Market painting is 172.6 cm high and 304.6 cm wide. Oil on canvas is the medium used.
It is painted in a representative style, known as Realism.Imogen Hart. "The Politics of Possession: Edwin Long’s Babylonian Marriage Market". Art History 35, no. 1 (2012): 87–105. Realism was a popular form of painting in the Victorian era, that was received well by art audiences.Smits, T. P. "A. Korda, Printing and Painting the News in Victorian London: The Graphic and Social Realism, 1869–1891. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015 9781472432988" (book review). Journal of European Periodical Studies 2 (2017): 56.Brown, Daniel. "Realist Con Artists". In Representing Realists in Victorian Literature and Criticism, 153. Cham: Springer, 2016. The Victorian Art World, and English art academy considered realism to be a high art.
Description The foreground of the painting contains a line of Babylonian women who are seated and are facing the painting's audience. These women are brides waiting to be auctioned off on the white stone stepped pedestal featured in the middle ground of the painting. Upon this pedestal the first bride is currently being auctioned; she is displayed for purchase by another darker-skinned woman.Gilman, Sander L. (1985). "Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature". Critical Inquiry 12(1): 221. To their left stands an auctioneer, presenting the woman to be sold.Bohrer, "Inventing Assyria: Exoticism and Reception in Nineteenth-Century England and France", p. 352 In the background of the image a crowd of men has gathered and is engaged in bidding on the women.Shireen Huda (2008). "The Major London Auction Houses". In Pedigree and Panache. ANU Press. p. 19. The crowd features men that appear to come from different wealth levels and classes, and they are consumed by an array of different activities. Bohrer notes that the underlying event and subject of depiction is the alteration of women into commodity through the process of the market place sales system.
The setting Bohrer posits that Long imagined and painted the place of sale to resemble a 19th century auction house. Bohrer argues that by doing this Long made the experience of viewing the painting more confronting for the present day Victorian viewer. Shireen Huda argues strongly for the idea that Long was intentionally depicting a contemporary auction house, most likely an auction space used by Christie's in London. Huda puts forth that Long had painted the famous auctioneer Thomas Woods as the auctioneer character within the work. The 1875 English art audience is argued by Bohrer to be familiar with the Babylonian/Assyrian setting.Bohrer, "Inventing Assyria: Exoticism and Reception in Nineteenth-Century England and France", 353 It is argued that Long conflates Babylon and Assyria, creating a hybrid eastern setting.
Composition
Long's inspiration for his choice of composition is unclear, as within the literature are housed competing and contrary opinions.Hart, Imogen (2012). "The Politics of Possession: Edwin Long's Babylonian Marriage Market". Art History 35(1): 87–95. The core topic of this disagreement is the divergence of Long's composition when compared with Rawlinson's translation of Herodotus,Hart, "The Politics of Possession: Edwin Long's Babylonian Marriage Market", 88Herodotus, George Rawlinson, John Gardner Wilkinson, and Henry Creswicke Rawlinson. Histories (New ed. London: John Murray, 1862), 262. the academic standard of translation at the time of painting.Hart, "The Politics of Possession: Edwin Long's Babylonian Marriage Market", 86–105
Imogen Hart points out that Herodotus describes the event taking place in the heart of a village, not an auction house, with the men of the village standing in a circle around the women, not a line.Hart, "The Politics of Possession: Edwin Long's Babylonian Marriage Market", 89 She further observes that Long's painting however, is set in a building reminiscent of a modern auction house, the men gathering in a line, not a circle. Bohrer attributes this divergence of Herodotus' translation to Long's own artistic freedom or reimagining of the fable, purposely abstracting the content of Herodotus to be more resonant with his 1875 audience. Hart attributes this divergence with Herodotus to Long's reading and favour for George Swayne's translation and commentary on Herodotus,George C Swayne. Herodotus (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1870), 37 which contains this linear arrangement and equal arrangement of the brides as depicted by Long. The Graphic notes Long's fondness for Swayne's commentary on Herodotus. It is argued that Long chose this method of composition because it better aligns the women (brides) with the decimal currency, with Hart arguing that the linear arrangement is more like a numerical scale that converts the brides to numerals.Hart, *The Politics of Possession: Edwin Long's Babylonian Marriage Market", 90 She posits that a core feature of the painting is Long's purposeful obscuring of the faces of the ugliest and most beautiful brides. By doing this Long is argued to address the philosophical problem of the difficulty or impossibility of assigning an objective worth to beauty.Bahrani, Zainab. Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia. London: Routledge, 2001, 70 Long was understood to put forward that the most beautiful and ugly things are deeply subjective and personal. The additional choice to have the women seated at an equal level has been observed to establish an impactful linear equality, not hierarchy; Hart argues that this feature of the women's seating is key to understanding Long's critique of the Babylonian ritual. The first bride is facing away from the viewer in the detail, and in doing so the viewer is not able to see her face, but can see the linear equality of the bride's seating positions.
Ownership The painting is currently held in the Picture Gallery of Royal Holloway, University of London,
Reception Display
The Babylonian Marriage Market was first displayed at the Royal Academy's annual exhibition in 1875. It was subsequently bought for Thomas Holloway, of the Royal Holloway University of London in 1882.
The painting made its public debut at the Royal Academy in 1875, where it drew large crowds and won widespread acclaim. The art critic John Ruskin praised the painting and highlighted the similarity between its subject matter and modern European marriage practices, which Ruskin thought were also mercenary and immoral. It is noted that audiences at the time had a taste for exotic eastern artefacts and narratives.Bingham, Caroline. The History of Royal Holloway College 1886–1986. London: Constable, 1987. The work was displayed in a gold painted frame. The frame was embossed with numeric Roman numeral script, each numeral encased in a circle which was positioned directly below each bridal figure in the painting. These numerals were thought to designate the rank of each of the brides.
Ongoing legacy The current owners of the painting, The Royal Holloway College, note how the painting became a symbol and discussion point for women's rights during the 1870s. The Babylonian Marriage Market was noted to resonate with the women of the 1870s, in light of the women's suffrage movement. The painting is still currently thought of a symbol which embodies this goal of gender equality. The silent film Intolerance (1916) includes a seven‐and‐a‐half‐minute scene closely based on this painting, and it is recreated in the historical sequence in The Marriage Market (1923).
Financial success The Babylonian Marriage Market was thought to be well received from the financial perspective, selling for a then record breaking £6,605.
Reception of the work's narrative