The Raffle (Raffling for the Goose)

William Sidney Mount

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

America’s most successful mid-nineteenth-century painter of narrative scenes, Mount depicted various aspects of his rural Long Island life around Stony Brook, New York. His seemingly simple, good-natured subjects also address complex social and political issues of the time. For example, the impromptu lottery of The Raffle (Raffling for the Goose) has been interpreted as an allusion to the widespread food shortages brought on by the country’s financial panic of 1837.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art