Before and After

Before and After is a pair of comic paintings by British painter William Hogarth. He made two painted versions in 1730–31. The first version showed an exterior scene in a wooded glade, based on contemporary French pastoral fête galante, while a second version moved the scene indoors. Hogarth made engravings based on the second version in 1736. In each pair, based on the position and appearance of the subjects, the first painting shows the couple before and the second after sexual intercourse. First painted version The first version, painted 1730–31, is now held in the Tate Gallery, lent by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, bequeathed by the merchant banker Arnold John Hugh Smith in 1964. Each oil on canvas painting measures In Before, a young man in blue clothing is making ardent advances, while his coy lover dressed in red shies away. A number of details suggest what will happen next: apples are falling from her lap, his knee points suggestively towards her, and his trousers are bulging. In the accompanying After, their faces are flushed and their clothes disarrayed, revealing her thighs and his genitalia. Second painted version The second painted versions, also painted 1730–31, are now held by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, acquired in 1978 from the estate of J. Paul Getty. The pair is in a more upright format: Before measures and After measures .