3-003-714 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Rouge et Noir", by P. Levin, from the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1861. Engraving from a painting. 'Every one who has been in a German Kursaal, where feasting, dancing, and gaming are combined, will recognise the truth of [Mr. Levin's] representation of a scene which approaches as near the realisation of a pandemonium as anything the most excited imagination could conceive. One especial point of truth in it is the brutalised expression of the faces of the habitués of this infernal resort, a peculiarity which all who have visited such scenes wall at once recognise. One group of painful interest diversifies the general heartless riot - that of a young man who, tempted for the first time to the fatal table, has lost his all, his wife and child being innocent participators in his ruin'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.