Cartomancy in Art

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All of the material you have access to here -- the instructive booklets, the nostalgic postcards, the boldly graphic ephemera, and all of the historical information researched and shared from the mind of the woman who is making it all happen -- can easily fit into one 8 x 10 foot room in an old Victorian farmhouse, but you would never see it without the investment of the time it takes to produce such a site and the caloric input such a site requires in the form of food for the writer, graphic designer, and database manager, as well as the US currency needed to pay for the computers, software applications, scanners, electricity, and internet connectivity that bring it out of that little room and into the world.

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Cartomancy in Art

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

Sofa
1 Harry-Roseland-It-s-All-In-The-Cards-1898-Sofa-Chair-One-Client.jpg
2 Harry-Roseland-Reading-The-Cards-1899-Hat-Box-Lid-Lap-Sofa-One-Client.jpg
3 Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-1910-Card-Reading-Hat-Box-Lid-Lap-Sofa-One-Client.jpg
4 Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-Undated-Card-Reading-Hat-Box-Lid-Lap-Sofa-Chair-Two-Clients.jpg

Table and Chairs
5 Harry-Roseland-Pick-A-Card-Undated-Red-Tablecloth-Chairs-Two-Clients.jpg
6 Harry-Roseland-Reading-Her-Cards-Undated-Banded-Tablecloth-Chairs-One-Client.jpg

Chairs and Stools
7 Harry-Roseland-Reading-The-Cards-Undated-Four-Legged-Stool-Chairs-Two-Clients.jpg
8 Harry-Roseland-The-Prophesy-Of-The-Cards-1923-Checker-Board-Four-Legged-Stool-Chairs-One-Client.jpg
9 Harry-Roseland-Reading-The-Cards-1903-Checker-Board-Lap-Chairs-Two-Clients.jpg
10 Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-1903-Card-Reading-Checker-Board-Hat-Box-Kitchen-Stool-Chair-One-Client.jpg
11 Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-1908-Card-Reading-Hat-Box-Kitchen-Stool-Chairs-One-Client.jpg
12 Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-Undated-Card-Reading-Hat-Box-Footstool-Chairs-One-Client.jpg
13 Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-Undated-Card-Reading-Hat-Box-Lid-Lap-Chairs-One-Client.jpg

Floor
14 Harry-Roseland-The-Fortune-Teller-1904-Card-Reading-Floor-And-Chair-One-Client.jpg

It's All in the Cards
(1898)
Elements: One Client, Sofa, Rag Rug, Playing Cards, Hat Box

Reading the Cards
(1899)
Elements: Sofa, One Client, Playing Cards, Rag Rug, Hat Box,

The Fortune Teller
(1910; signed, oil on canvas, 20" x 30")
Elements: Playing Cards, Sofa, One Client, Footstool, Hat Box, Rag Rug, Purse

The Fortune Teller
(Undated)
Elements: Sofa, Playing Cards, Rag Rug, Two Clients

Pick A Card
(Undated)
Elements: Table, Red Tablecloth, Brown Teapot, Chairs, Rag Rug, Workbasket, Yarn Balls, Two Clients

Reading Her Cards
(Undated)
Elements: Table, Striped Tablecloth, Chairs, Rag Rug, One Client

Reading the Cards (1903; Square Lap Board, Two Women)

The Fortune Teller (1903, square checker or Chess Board on Hat Box)

The Fortune Teller
(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)
Elements: Playing Cards, Hat Box, One Client, Kitchen Stool

The Fortune Teller
(Undated)
Elements: Playing Cards, Lap, Hatbox Lid, Chairs, One Client

The Fortune Teller
(Undated)
Elements: Playing Cards, Hat-Box, Footstool, Chairs, Work Basket, Loose Balls of Yarn, One Client

Reading the Cards
(Undated, Oil on Canvas; 20" x 32", Signed Upper Middle Right)
Elements: Playing Cards, Four-Legged Stool, Chairs, Bellows, Braided Rug, Two Clients

The Prophesy of the Cards
(1923)
Elements: Playing Cards, Checkerboard, Four-Legged Stool, Chairs, Two Clients

The Fortune Teller
(1904)
Elements: Playing Cards, Floor, One Client

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

Cartomancy in Art

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