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Cartomancy in Art

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Cartomancy in Art

The Fortune Teller, Adele Kindt, 1835

Marie Adelaide (Adele) Kindt (16 December 1804 - 8 May 1893) was a Belgian artist who painted historical subjects, portraits, and genre subjects.

Fortunetelling Card Reading, by Aleksei Venetsianov, 1842

Aleksei Venetsianov (18 February 1780 - 16 December 1847) was a Russian painter of Greek descent, whose surname translates as "Venetian." He painted peasants and ordinary people, and taught painting to the poor, and was eventually rewarded by being appointed a court painter to Tsar Nicholas I.

The Fortune Teller, Moritz Calisch, 1856

Moritz Calisch (12 April 1819 - 13 March 1870), was a Jewish painter who was born and lived in Amsterdam, in the Northern Netherlands. He painted portraits in the Jewish community and historical works in the romantic style.

Bei der Kartenlegerin (At the Card Reader's), Ernst Hanfstaenegel, 1871

Ernst Hanfstaengl (30 March 1840 - 20 February 1897) was born in Dresden, Germany. He painted genre subjects and travel landscapes, as far away as Sicily. He died on the Isle of Capri.

The Fortune Teller, Albrecht Albert Anker, 1880

Albrecht Samuel Anker (1831-1910), also known as Albert Anker, was a Swiss painter and illustrator who specialized in genre paintings of his native country.

The Fortune Teller, Trade Card, W.C. Coup's New United Monster Shows, 1880s

William Cameron Coup (1857 - 1895) operated a large circus, the New United Monster Shows, throughout the American Midwest and East Coast in the 1880s. His troupe featured acrobats, aerialists, and a menagerie of exotic animals, as well as the $50,000 Broncho Horses in their Great Military Drill and Marvelous Evolutions; Madame Georgiana, the Iron Jaw Woman; Amos' Colored Jubilee Band; the Jacketsch Imperial Japanese Troupe; Menter's Silver Cornet Band; Prof. Haskins' Punch and Judy; Stone's Troupe of Iroquois and Comanche Indians; Walter Stewart, the Armless and Legless Wonder; Prof. Lorento, Magician; the Belmont Family of Bell-Ringers; Prof. Fryer's Performing Dogs; Flora, the Ascenionist; and Wiano and Pluto, the Wild Men of Borneo. The artist who illustrated this large souvenir trade card is not known, but the image is startling in the sense of chilling hostility it conveys between the card reader and her client.

The Card Reader, J. Klar, 19th century.

I have been unable to find any information on this painter, whose signature looks to be "J. Klar," and seems to be written i a Germanic-style script. The painting appeared in the catalogue of a Florida gallery in 2019 and was simply said to be of 19th century European provenance.

Question to the Cards, Edouard Bisson, 1889

Edouard Bisson (1856-1945) was a French Pre-Rahaelite painter who specialized in wispy, romantic women; this painting is a bit more grounded than his usual offerings.

The Fortune Teller, William Clarke Wontner, 1899

William Clarke Wontner (1857-1930) was a British artist best known as a portraitist in the 19th century Classical-Romantic style.

Interlude: Harry Roseland's Cartomancer Series, 1898-1923

As we reach the end of the 19th century, it is time to take a side-tour into the cartomantic paintings of Harry Herman Roseland (c.1967 - 12 December, 1950), the self-taught Brooklyn, New York based painter who produced a phenomenal number of genre paintings featuring poor African Americans. These paints were so popular that he created variations on them for individual buyers, so many of them appear to be variations of one another. Although the domestic subject matter is varied, quite a few of Roseland's paintings feature a black fortune teller. My entire collection of them fills its own page; her i have selected only the card readers.

It's All in the Cards by Harry Roseland (1898)

I have collected a series of 14 paintings in which the black fortune teller is reading cards. The cards are a pack of ordinary playing cards, and the layout the reader uses seems most often to be three rows of five, a popular 19th century spread called The Fifteen Card Method.

Reading the Cards by Harry Roseland (1899)

It is obvious that this series was difficult for Harry Roseland to compose, due to the small size of the cards and their indistinct markings. Perhaps the most beautiful image is the 1898 paining "It's All in the Cards," in which the cards are seen very clearly against the black leather of the sofa, but this composition might be judged unsuccessful to the popular eye because the reader's back is turned to the viewer.

File:Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-Undated-Cards-Two-Women-Sofa.jpg

The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (Undated)

In 1899, a different painting from the same photo-shoot was released, titled "Reading the Cards," but although in this painting we can see the reader's face, it in the first in which the ungainly devise of the hat box lid was introduced as a reading surface. No real card reader would ever use a small, light-weight circular surface to read by the Fifteen Card Method, and all subsequent images in which the hat box lid appears are lacking in the naturalism for which Roseland was justly celebrated. Only a card-reader might pick up on the awkwardness, of course -- and to the public, these hat-box-lid scenes probably look just fine.

Pick A Card by Harry Roseland (Undated)

In his repeated attempts to capture the essence of the card readings, Roseland posed his subjects in a wide variety of seating arrangements, moving from the sofa to a table. The table was -- and remains -- the standard surface for card reading, but the angle was too tall for Roseland to clearly show the faces of the cards. He can only show the reader holding a card, never the full layout.

Reading Her Cards by Harry Roseland (Undated)

At this point he left the world of naturalism and began setting up paired chairs with a variety of stools between them on which a flat surface was laid for the card reading. In some cases he resorted to the awkward device of a lap-board.

Reading the Cards by Harry Roseland (1903)

The lid of the reader's hatbox, in which she keeps her knitting, provides an incredibly fragile and awkward reading surface; better is the wooden checkerboard. The latter may look like a random square of wood to a viewer unfamiliar with the other paintings Harry Roseland made of this family, but there are several in which the reader's husband and grandchildren play checkers on this same board.

The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (1903)

Finally, as a last resort, he places the reader on the floor, in imitation of European "Gypsy card reading" paintings of his era. While the composition is satisfactory, the reader must now employ the typical Gypsy arc-of-cards layout, which was pretty obviously not this woman's chosen method. Not only that, seeing the reader, obviously an elderly lady with mobility issues, seated on the floor is a bit odd: you just know she would never have done that herself, and you can only imaging how her bones ached after taking that pose!

The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (1904)

As with all of Harry Roseland's other paintings, titles were often re-used, especially when the images were to be printed in sets of six postcards, so i have given each image a unique descriptor. I have organized them roughly by location within the home, number of clients, and then chronologically.

The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (1908, Unsigned; 11 1/2" x 11 1/2"; this was a calendar print for McCormick farm implements, hence the square format; see a fuller version of the calendar above)

XXX

The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (1910)

XXX

The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (Undated)

XXX

The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (Undated)

XXX

Reading the Cards by Harry Roseland (Undated)

XXX

The Prophesy of the Cards by Harry Roseland (1923)

And Back to the Main Gallery

Having followed Harry Roseland's cartomancer from 1898 to 1923, we now return to the main gallery, in 1922

The Fortune Telling, Julio Romero de Torres, 1922

Julio Romero de Torres (9 November 1874 - 10 May 1930) was a Spanish artist who also lived in Argentina. This picture, in the symbolist style tells an interesting story. The card reader on the right holds up the five of coins, but the sitter, at left, turns away, looking sad and distracted by her inner emotions. Behind them we see the reason: in Cordoba, Spain, by the house and fountain of La Fuenseca, theChrist of the Lanterns and the Palace of the Marquis of La Fuensanta del Valle, a woman dressed in red leans against the doorjamb – a copy of the artist's own 1905 paining Lovesickness. In the streets, a disheveled and distraught woman runs after a man, who escapes her attempts to catch him. It is these scenes, played out in memory, which trouble the cartomancer's client.

Mystery Magazine, Gypsy Wagon Card Reader, April 15, 1926, cover

The artist who painted the cover for the April 15, 1926 cover of Mystery Magazine seems to have signed the work with the block initials NS.

Romany Good Advice, 1930s

XXX

The Domino Club, San Francisco, Menu front, 1930s-1940s

xxx

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catherine yronwode
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Your Wate and Fate

Special thanks to my dear husband and creative partner nagasiva yronwode for illustrations, scans, and clean-ups.

Cartomancy in Art: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:23, 15 August 2025

Cartomancy in Art

Interlude: Harry Roseland's Cartomancer Series, 1898-1923

And Back to the Main Gallery

See Also

To Discuss This Patreon Page

Navigation menu

@@ Line 52: / Line 52: @@
-William Cameron Coup (1857 - 1895) operated a large circus, the New United Monster Shows, throughout the American Midwest and East Coast in the 1880s with a troupe that included acrobats, aerialists, and animals, including the $50,000 Broncho Horses in their Great Military Drill and Marvelous Evolutions; Madame Georgiana, the Iron Jaw Woman; Amos' Colored Jubilee Band; the Jacketsch Imperial Japanese Troupe; Menter's Silver Cornet Band; Prof. Haskins' Punch and Judy; Stone's Troupe of Iroquois and Comanche Indians; Walter Stewart, the Armless and Legless Wonder; Prof. Lorento, Magician; the Belmont Family of Bell-Ringers; Prof. Fryer's Performing Dogs; Flora, the Ascenionist; and Wiano and Pluto, the Wild Men of Borneo. The artist who illustrated this large souvenir trade card is not known, but the image is startling in the sense of chilling hostility it conveys between the reader and her client.
+William Cameron Coup (1857 - 1895) operated a large circus, the New United Monster Shows, throughout the American Midwest and East Coast in the 1880s. His troupe featured acrobats, aerialists, and a menagerie of exotic animals, as well as the $50,000 Broncho Horses in their Great Military Drill and Marvelous Evolutions; Madame Georgiana, the Iron Jaw Woman; Amos' Colored Jubilee Band; the Jacketsch Imperial Japanese Troupe; Menter's Silver Cornet Band; Prof. Haskins' Punch and Judy; Stone's Troupe of Iroquois and Comanche Indians; Walter Stewart, the Armless and Legless Wonder; Prof. Lorento, Magician; the Belmont Family of Bell-Ringers; Prof. Fryer's Performing Dogs; Flora, the Ascenionist; and Wiano and Pluto, the Wild Men of Borneo. The artist who illustrated this large souvenir trade card is not known, but the image is startling in the sense of chilling hostility it conveys between the card reader and her client.
@@ Line 64: / Line 64: @@
-Edouard Bisson (1856-1945) was a French Pre-Rahaelite painter who specialized in wispy, romantic women; this painting is a bit more grounded than his usual offerins.
+Edouard Bisson (1856-1945) was a French Pre-Rahaelite painter who specialized in wispy, romantic women; this painting is a bit more grounded than his usual offerings.
@@ Line 75: / Line 75: @@
 ===Interlude: Harry Roseland's Cartomancer Series, 1898-1923===
+As we reach the end of the 19th century, it is time to take a side-tour into the cartomantic paintings of Harry Herman Roseland (c.1967 - 12 December, 1950), the self-taught Brooklyn, New York based painter who produced a phenomenal number of genre paintings featuring poor African Americans. These paints were so popular that he created variations on them for individual buyers, so many of them appear to be variations of one another. Although the domestic subject matter is varied, quite a few of Roseland's paintings feature a black fortune teller. My entire collection of them fills its own page; her i have selected only the card readers.
+[[File:Harry-Roseland-It-s-All-In-The-Cards-1898-Sofa-Chair-One-Client.jpg|thumb|500px|center|It's All in the Cards by Harry Roseland (1898)]]
 I have collected a series of 14 paintings in which the black fortune teller is reading cards.
-The cards are a pack of ordinary playing cards, and the
+The cards are a pack of ordinary playing cards, and the layout the reader uses seems most often to be three rows of five, a popular 19th century spread called The Fifteen Card Method.
-layout the reader uses seems most often to be three rows of five, a popular 19th century spread called The Fifteen
-Card Method.
+[[File:Harry-Roseland-Reading-The-Cards-1899-Hat-Box-Lid-Lap-Sofa-One-Client.jpg|thumb|500px|center|Reading the Cards by Harry Roseland (1899)]]
 It is obvious that this series was difficult for Harry Roseland to compose, due to the small size
 of the cards and their indistinct markings. Perhaps the most beautiful image is the
-paining "It's All in the Cards," in which
+paining "It's All in the Cards," in which the cards are seen very clearly against the black leather of the sofa, but this composition might be judged unsuccessful to the popular eye because the reader's back is turned to the viewer.
-the cards are seen very clearly against the black leather of the sofa, but this composition
-might be judged unsuccessful to the popular eye because the reader's back is turned to the viewer.
+[[File:Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-Undated-Cards-Two-Women-Sofa.jpg|thumb|500px|center|The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (Undated)]]
 In 1899, a different painting from the same photo-shoot was released, titled "Reading the Cards,"
 but although in this painting we can see the reader's face, it in the first in which the ungainly
 devise of the hat box lid was introduced as a reading surface. No real card reader would ever
-use a small, light-weight circular surface to read by the Fifteen Card Method, and all subsequent images in
+use a small, light-weight circular surface to read by the Fifteen Card Method, and all subsequent images in which the hat box lid appears are lacking in the naturalism for which Roseland was justly
-which the hat box lid appears are lacking in the naturalism for which Roseland was justly
 celebrated. Only a card-reader might pick up on the awkwardness, of course -- and to the public,
 these hat-box-lid scenes probably look just fine.
-In his repeated attempts to capture the essence of the
-card readings, Roseland posed his subjects in a wide variety of seating arrangements, moving from
-the sofa to a table. The table was -- and remains -- the standard
-surface for card reading, but the angle was too tall for Roseland to clearly show the faces of
-the cards. He can only show the reader holding a card, never the full layout.
-At this point he left the world of naturalism and began setting up paired chairs with a
+[[File:Harry-Roseland-Pick-A-Card-Undated-Red-Tablecloth-Chairs-Two-Clients.jpg|thumb|500px|center|Pick A Card by Harry Roseland (Undated)]]
-variety of stools between them on which a flat surface was laid for the card reading. In some cases he
-resorted to the awkward device of a lap-board.
-The lid of the reader's hatbox, in which she keeps her knitting, provides an incredibly fragile and
+In his repeated attempts to capture the essence of the  card readings, Roseland posed his subjects in a wide variety of seating arrangements, moving from the sofa to a table. The table was -- and remains -- the standard surface for card reading, but the angle was too tall for Roseland to clearly show the faces of the cards. He can only show the reader holding a card, never the full layout.
-awkward reading surface; better is the wooden checkerboard. The latter may look like a random square of
-wood to a viewer unfamiliar with the other paintings Harry Roseland made of this family, but there
-are several in which the reader's husband and grandchildren play checkers on this same board.
-Finally, as a last resort, he places the reader on the floor, in imitation of European "Gypsy card reading" paintings of his era. While the compsition is satisfactory, the reader must now employ the typical Gypsy arc-of-cards layout, whch was pretty obviously not this woman's chosen method. Not only that, seeing the reader, obviously an elderly lady with mobility issues, seated on the floor is a bit odd: you just know she would never have done that herself, and you can only imaging how her bones ached after taking that pose!
-As with all of Harry Roseland's other paintings, titles were often re-used, especially when the images were to be printed in sets of six postcards, so i have given each image a unique descriptor. I have organized them roughly by location within the home, number of clients, and then chronologically.
-[[File:Harry-Roseland-It-s-All-In-The-Cards-1898-Sofa-Chair-One-Client.jpg|thumb|500px|center|It's All in the Cards by Harry Roseland (1898)]]
+[[File:Harry-Roseland-Reading-Her-Cards-Undated-Banded-Tablecloth-Chairs-One-Client.jpg|thumb|500px|center|Reading Her Cards by Harry Roseland (Undated)]]
-XXX
-[[File:Harry-Roseland-Reading-The-Cards-1899-Hat-Box-Lid-Lap-Sofa-One-Client.jpg|thumb|500px|center|Reading the Cards by Harry Roseland (1899)]]
+At this point he left the world of naturalism and began setting up paired chairs with a
+variety of stools between them on which a flat surface was laid for the card reading. In some cases he resorted to the awkward device of a lap-board.
-XXX
-[[File:Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-Undated-Cards-Two-Women-Sofa.jpg|thumb|500px|center|The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (Undated)]]
-XXX
+[[File:Harry-Roseland-Reading-The-Cards-1903-Checker-Board-Lap-Chairs-Two-Clients.jpg|thumb|500px|center|Reading the Cards by Harry Roseland (1903)]]
-[[File:Harry-Roseland-Pick-A-Card-Undated-Red-Tablecloth-Chairs-Two-Clients.jpg|thumb|500px|center|Pick A Card by Harry Roseland (Undated)]]
-XXX
+The lid of the reader's hatbox, in which she keeps her knitting, provides an incredibly fragile and
+awkward reading surface; better is the wooden checkerboard. The latter may look like a random square of wood to a viewer unfamiliar with the other paintings Harry Roseland made of this family, but there
+are several in which the reader's husband and grandchildren play checkers on this same board.
-[[File:Harry-Roseland-Reading-Her-Cards-Undated-Banded-Tablecloth-Chairs-One-Client.jpg|thumb|500px|center|Reading Her Cards by Harry Roseland (Undated)]]
-XXX
+[[File:Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-1903-Card-Reading-Checker-Board-Hat-Box-Kitchen-Stool-Chair-One-Client.jpg|thumb|500px|center|The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (1903)]]
-[[File:Harry-Roseland-Reading-The-Cards-1903-Checker-Board-Lap-Chairs-Two-Clients.jpg|thumb|500px|center|Reading the Cards by Harry Roseland (1903)]]
-XXX
+Finally, as a last resort, he places the reader on the floor, in imitation of European "Gypsy card reading" paintings of his era. While the composition is satisfactory, the reader must now employ the typical Gypsy arc-of-cards layout, which was pretty obviously not this woman's chosen method. Not only that, seeing the reader, obviously an elderly lady with mobility issues, seated on the floor is a bit odd: you just know she would never have done that herself, and you can only imaging how her bones ached after taking that pose!
-[[File:Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-1903-Card-Reading-Checker-Board-Hat-Box-Kitchen-Stool-Chair-One-Client.jpg|thumb|500px|center|The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (1903)]]
-XXX
 [[File:Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-1904-Card-Reading-Floor-And-Chair-One-Client.jpg|thumb|500px|center|The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (1904)]]
-XXX
+As with all of Harry Roseland's other paintings, titles were often re-used, especially when the images were to be printed in sets of six postcards, so i have given each image a unique descriptor. I have organized them roughly by location within the home, number of clients, and then chronologically.
 [[File:Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-1908-Card-Reading-Hat-Box-Kitchen-Stool-Chairs-One-Client.jpg|thumb|500px|center|The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (1908, Unsigned; 11 1/2" x 11 1/2"; this was a calendar print for McCormick farm implements, hence the square format; see a fuller version of the calendar above)]]
 XXX
 [[File:Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-1910-Card-Reading-Hat-Box-Lid-Lap-Sofa-One-Client.jpg|thumb|500px|center|The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (1910)]]
 XXX
 [[File:Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-Undated-Card-Reading-Hat-Box-Lid-Lap-Chairs-One-Client.jpg|thumb|500px|center|The Fortune Teller by Harry Roseland (Undated)]]
@@ Line 175: / Line 174: @@
-XXX
+==And Back to the Main Gallery==
-[[File:The-Fortune-Telling-Julio-Romero-de-Torres-1922.jpg|thumb|500px|center|The Fortune Telling, Julio Romero de Torres, 1922]]
+Having followed Harry Roseland's cartomancer from 1898 to 1923, we now return to the main gallery, in 1922
-Julio Romero de Torres (1874-1930) was a Spanish artist who also lived in Argentina.
-The young woman on the right, in working-class dress with her legs folded, does not seem
+[[File:The-Fortune-Telling-Julio-Romero-de-Torres-1922.jpg|thumb|500px|center|The Fortune Telling, Julio Romero de Torres, 1922]]
-able – even by displaying the five of oros (a Spanish playing card) – to attract the
-attention of her companion, who is leaning back, her obviously melancholy expression
-suggesting some kind of anxiety over love.
-Behind them lies Cordoba, here represented by the house and fountain of La Fuenseca, the
+Julio Romero de Torres (9 November 1874 - 10 May 1930) was a Spanish artist who also lived in Argentina. This picture, in the symbolist style tells an interesting story. The card reader on the right holds up the five of coins, but the sitter, at left, turns away, looking sad and distracted by her inner emotions. Behind them we see the reason: in Cordoba, Spain, by the house and fountain of La Fuenseca, theChrist of the Lanterns and the Palace of the Marquis of La Fuensanta del Valle, a
-Christ of the Lanterns and the Palace of the Marquis of La Fuensanta del Valle, where a
+woman dressed in red leans against the doorjamb – a copy of the artist's own 1905 paining Lovesickness. In the streets, a disheveled and distraught woman runs after a man, who escapes her attempts to catch him. It is these scenes, played out in memory, which trouble the cartomancer's client.
-woman in a red shawl leans against the doorjamb – a compositional resource used by the
-artist on several occasions after Lovesick (Cordoba Museum of Fine Arts) of around 1905.
@@ Line 206: / Line 199: @@
 [[File:Domino-Club-San-Francisco-Menu-front.jpg|thumb|500px|center|The Domino Club, San Francisco, Menu front, 1930s-1940s]]
+xxx

Cartomancy in Art: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:23, 15 August 2025

Cartomancy in Art

Interlude: Harry Roseland's Cartomancer Series, 1898-1923

And Back to the Main Gallery

See Also

To Discuss This Patreon Page

Navigation menu

Search