Kick Up at a Hazard Table

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Men from a range of social classes gather to play Hazard, an old English dice game (from which modern craps descends). Tensions have erupted into violence after a British officer, standing at right, has suffered a substantial loss. He aims a pistol at an elderly Frenchman, identified by his long pigtail, who responds in kind to protect his winnings. To stave off disaster, a third gambler prepares to bring down a chair on the officer, while another soldier aims a bottle and candlestick at the Frenchman. Rowlandson’s vortex-like arrangement conveys the disruptive forces that gambling sets loose and his expressive use of tonal aquatint and added color in this rare pre-publication state of the print accentuate the drama. At the time he produced this print the artist was himself steadily wagering away a substantial legacy received in 1789 and was destitute by 1793.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art