Weddings in Famous Paintings

Peasant Wedding (1567), Pieter Bruegel the Elder

June has traditionally been one of the most popular months for weddings, along with September and October. However, the subject is not so commonly captured on canvas. Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder famously painted his Renaissance peasant scenes in red and gold, celebrating wedding feasts and dances. I once owned a print of Bruegel's Peasant Wedding.

I also enjoy his painting, The Wedding Dance (1566).

The Bridal Pair with The Eiffel Tower
(1939), Marc Chagall

Although Russian-French artist, Marc Chagall, is clearly one of my favorites, some of his wedding paintings are a little too dark for my tastes. I prefer this dreamlike painting where the bride and groom are floating in the air. Though many of Chagall's paintings typically employ religious symbolism, here he uses nursery rhymes, including farm animals like the oversized rooster.

The Wedding (1948), Jacob Lawrence

American painter, Jacob Lawrence uses African-American themes from historic events and contemporary life, though I was only able to find one painting of a wedding scene, courtesy of The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle. It definitely reflects his style that has been dubbed, "dynamic cubism". I appreciate his use of color and patterning but wish his figures were more distinct. For example, I can clearly see cufflinks and the thin red binding of a bible (?) but not the minister's face. It's like he is bowing his head or maybe even facing the altar.

The Wedding of the Bohemian (1925-26), Munch

Edvard Munch also painted his version of a wedding feast. This painting was at the Munch Museum in Oslo where we visited in June 2019, though I honestly don't remember seeing it. He has painted himself into the scene, apparently seated at the far left or possibly in the background. While the feast looks happy enough, the people do not.

The Wedding Party (1905), Rousseau

Henri Rousseau's The Wedding Party is a rather unusual photographic wedding portrait of a white bride surrounded by people dressed in black. The black dog in the foreground seems to upstage the bride, although apparently it is meant to be a trick to draw your eye deep into the composition (a repoussoir). The overlapping of the figures is also strange and makes the bride appear to be floating at the dead center.

For more wedding paintings, please visit Janet Howard-Fatta's blog article, Artists and Wedding Paintings Throughout History. The Art Gorgeous has also published The Best Weddings In Art History. The second link displays Kahlo's portrait of her and husband Diego Rivera, which I referenced in my post entitled, Things That Go Together in Art – Subjects, Portraits, Landscapes/Seascapes, Still Lifes, and Couples.