A Gaming Table at Devonshire House

A Gaming Table at Devonshire House

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rowlandson underscored gambling’s grip on British aristocrats at the end of the eighteenth century by centering the action in this drawing upon two sisters from the Spencer family, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and Henrietta (Harriet) Ponsonby, Viscountess Duncannon. They preside over a nighttime game of hazard. The setting is likely Devonshire House, Piccadilly, where the duchess often turned the drawing room into a private gambling salon. Hazard, which involves two dice and a stepped betting system, is being played for high stakes. One die has already fallen, and the other hovers in midair transfixing those at the table. The young gambler at right wears the star of the Order of the Garter, which identifies him as the Prince of Wales. Georgiana, the seated dice-thrower, was by 1789 more than £60,000 in debt (almost $6,000,000 today).


Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Gaming Table at Devonshire HouseA Gaming Table at Devonshire HouseA Gaming Table at Devonshire HouseA Gaming Table at Devonshire HouseA Gaming Table at Devonshire House

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.