Soldiers Playing at Cards, from "Illustrated London News"

Soldiers Playing at Cards, from "Illustrated London News"

William Luson Thomas

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Spanish painter Ruipérez was known for producing gently nostaglic historical genre subjects, often inspired by 17th and 18th century Dutch and French precedents. In this composition, a French soldier plays at cards with a country man in an inn, and the latter seems likely to be outwitted. Thomas's engraving, published in the "Illustrated News," reproduced a painting shown in April 1861 at The French Gallery at 120-121 Pall, a venue established by Ernest Gambart around 1854 that showed European works every Spring.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Soldiers Playing at Cards, from "Illustrated London News"Soldiers Playing at Cards, from "Illustrated London News"Soldiers Playing at Cards, from "Illustrated London News"Soldiers Playing at Cards, from "Illustrated London News"Soldiers Playing at Cards, from "Illustrated London News"

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.