A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

242. THE GAME OF BACKGAMMON.

Teniers (Flemish: 1610-1694). See 154.

"An example," says Mr. J. T. Nettleship in a comparison between Morland and some of the Dutch masters, "not only of the works that Morland loved, but of the life (alas!) he best loved too. In one respect it at once takes rank above the English painter, for every man must be a portrait; the two playing might indeed be English as well as Dutch, the man looking on is a degraded boor. In the chimney-place are several men farther off—one with his back to you is seated on a bench with his head against the chimney-jamb, a 'poor drinker,' he seems. The standing man, standing with his back to the fire, smoking a long clay, looks half-pitying, half-scornful at the feebler sinner" (George Morland, p. 23).