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A
Kick-Up at a Hazard Table, 1790
The
Fashionable Mamma, or,
The Convenience of Modern Dress, 1796
The
Overthrow of Dr. Slop,
from Tristram Shandy Book 2. 9, 1773
The
Damnation of Obadiah,
from Tristram Shandy Book 3.11, 1773
The
Battle of the Cataplasm,
from Tristram Shandy Book 6.3, 1773
The
Siege of Namur,
from Tristram Shandy Book 6.22, 1773
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THOMAS
ROWLANDSON, British, 1756–1827
A Kick-Up at a Hazard Table
etching and aquatint,
1790
Ackland Fund, 81.37.2
Rowlandson was one of the best-known comic artists
in eighteenth-century Britain. One
of the distinguishing characteristics of the comic genre is the reduction
of the human form into its essential lines, leaving out details such as
facial contouring and shadow. Rowlandson
uses relatively few lines to draw the characters but is still able to
represent a variety of types.
In this print,
a fight is breaking out over the gambling game Hazard.
On the surface, the work seems disordered and confused, but it
is actually highly ordered and balances characters and elements with their
opposites to heighten the comic effect. The old man on the left with the gun is ready
for a duel with the more prepared younger man with a gun on the right.
A pair at the top of the table is ready to enter the fight, armed
with a candle and a chair, while the pair at the opposite side of the
table are falling over. What other opposite pairs are comic in this work?
Chandra
Mosley
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