A Game of Quadrille
A Game of Quadrille
ca. 1740
Hubert-François Gravelot
1699–1773
Oil on canvas
25 × 30 inches (63.5 × 76.2 cm)
In a tastefully appointed room, three ladies and three gentlemen are engaged in a round of quadrille, a card game developed at the French court in the early eighteenth century. At right, a maid and an enslaved servant are about to serve tea (the latter carries a kettle, as does the page in Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress, displayed nearby). Gravelot, who was born and trained in France, came to London in 1733 to pursue a career as a painter and book illustrator. Gravelot’s A Game of Quadrille became well known through a large
copy displayed at Vauxhall Gardens, London’s premier pleasure ground at the time. This large version was one of approximately fifty pictures made to decorate the Gardens’ “supper-boxes,” where visitors dined.
B2011.34
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund, in honor of Brian Allen, Director of Studies, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (1993-2012)
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