The Card Players, 1845 - 1850
Oil on panel, 19 3/4 x 25"
Gift of Barbara B. Millhouse, 1974.2.1

Alfred Frankenstein, the biographer who reintroduced America to William Harnett, William Sidney Mount, and John Frederick Peto, decried attempts to view Mount as a "lindsey-woolsey primitive."  Frankenstein saw through his generation's bias against overt narrative and recognized in Mount an elegant stylist.  Mount, though he painted moralizing scenes of everyday life, possessed remarkable composition skills and masterful technique.  The painter's journals are filled with notes on pigments, media, lighting, varnishes, and brushes.  In the 1960s, when American painting flaunted traditional skills and society at large challenged accepted standards, Frankenstein and an admiring public rediscovered Mount's artistry and, perhaps, understood his message.