How to Pluck a Goose
Thomas Rowlandson British
Publisher Thomas Williamson British
Not on view
A young officer playing the card game Cassino with three elderly expert females is the "goose" being plucked in this print. The women wear fashionable high-waisted dresses and feathered turbans, and the partners, at left and right, make genteel exclamations over the officer’s bad luck. Having already collected "a bumper," or unopposed string of eight tricks, they are about to conclude the game as the woman in spectacles displays a "great casino" (the ten of diamonds) and achieves the winning count of eleven. In Britain, decorum prevented women from visiting public gaming establishments, but allowed them to play for money in private. While the elderly players in Rowlandson’s print mask their skill with a veneer of gentility, the work reflects the widespread approbation aimed at women who enriched themselves by acting like male sharpers.
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