The Card Players
American Art Union, New York|Richard Caton Woodville|Charles Burt|J. Dalton
1851 · Steel engraving · Drawings and Prints
In a work reiminscent of Dutch genre paintings, two men play cards at a table as a third arbitrates. At left, a Black servant seated next to a stove clasps his hands. The print was published by the American Art-Union, a New York institution that boasted nearly nineteen thousand subscribers at its height in 1849-50. For an annual fee of five dollars, each member received a large, finely engraved, print and was entered in a lottery to win original artworks which were exhibited at the Art-Union's Free Gallery. Aimed at educating the public about contemporary American art, the group's distribution network reached members in every state. This contributed to the creation of a national market for landscapes and genre paintings. The system flourished for a limited period, however, with no lottery taking place in 1851, the year that the Art-Union issued this work as part of a set of small engravings titled "Gallery of American Art, No. I."
- Artist
- American Art Union, New York|Richard Caton Woodville|Charles Burt|J. Dalton
- Date
- 1851
- Medium
- Steel engraving
- Department
- Drawings and Prints
- Credit line
- The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1993
