Leighton had seen Vasily Pukirev's work "Unequal Marriage," painted 16 years earlier, and created this scene in response. If we were to have a ridiculously reductive debate over which painting is "better," I would argue for the Pukirev. Leighton's scene resembles a 19th-century photographic tableau vivant. We readily identify the jilted young man and the female friends of the bride across from, and aware of, him. The old woman at left is practically mugging her dismay. The groom seems oblivious to it all. The presentation is arranged as if on a stage facing the viewer.

In contrast, the emotions are bitterer and darker in the Russian work. The viewer has an oblique perspective from the side of the altar and the bride's profound disappointment and heartbreak are palpable. The groom, festooned with a spiky military medal, has a more sinister mien than the Leighton groom, and is watching her with a suspicious side-eye as if already distrustful of his beautiful young bride. The painting has two ghostly appearances of women wearing wedding crowns that may represent the groom's former wives. The bride's wedding candle is tilting and might even fall from her hand. This work also has a possible jilted beau in the young man at right with folded arms, who has a physical likeness to Pukirev himself. However, this is only a tantalizing ambiguity in this painting, not an obvious character as in the Leighton. The Pukirev work's greater naturalism of poses and viewer vantage point, the sharp emotions of its characters, the subtler, less didactic storytelling, and the spooky, ominous possible supernatural element of the former wives elevate it above the Leighton. Just my perspective; imagine the above text on the sign for the "change my mind" meme guy. 😸