Audio description:
A Game of Cut-Throat Euchre by Frank Gascoigne Heath
Penlee House Gallery & Museum

The painting in front of you is A Game of Cut-Throat Euchre.  It is a large oil on canvas with an ornate gilt frame, measuring just over 1 metre high by 1 ? metres wide or about 4 foot high by 5 foot wide.  It was painted in 1909 by Frank Gascoigne Heath, who was an associate of the prominent Newlyn School artist Stanhope Forbes. 

It shows three mature fishermen seated at leisure in the hold of a wooden boat, playing a game of cards, watched closely by a boy who appears to be in his mid-teens.  Bright daylight is flooding in through the open hatch at the top centre of the painting and spills over the four figures.  It starkly illuminates their heads and shoulders.  

The figures are large and dominate the painting.  The fisherman on the left is seated with his back toward the viewer but is turned at a 45 degree angle so his right arm and leg and the right side of his face is visible.  A gold ear-ring glints in his right earlobe.  The skin on his hand and face is brown and weathered.  He has cropped brown hair and a beard.  His back is in shadow.  He is looking down at the five cards fanned out in his hands.  Two are red and one is black; the other two are hidden.  He wears a cream coloured shirt or smock, blue trousers and long knitted socks that come over his knee.  His clothes, and those of the other figures, are painted with long, fluid brush strokes using a more impressionistic style than the earlier Newlyn School artists.

On the right side of the painting another man bends forward, with his right arm extended, to place a card on the floor.  He wears a red beret which stands out amongst the muted creams, blues and browns of the rest of the painting, though the colour is echoed in the small red dots of the playing cards.  He wears a blue shirt and has a white cigarette in his mouth.  Wisps of smoke can be seen drifting up through the hatch into the sunlight.  He holds several cards in his left hand Ð including an ace of diamonds.  

At his right shoulder is the young crew member.  His left arm rests on the older manÕs shoulder.  He looks down with an expression of great interest at the cards on the floor.

The third player is seated facing us and is also looking down at the cards on the floor.  With his receding hairline he appears to be a little older than the other players.  In his left hand he also holds some cards.  We can only see the green backs of these cards.  His right arm is extended to rest on his knee Ð his right hand hanging down in a relaxed position.  He smokes a pipe.  The thin straight stem of his pipe joins the middle of the bowl at a 90 degree angle.  The bowl has a flat bottom so that it could easily be set down on a flat surface.  A short vertical wooden ladder leading up and out of the hold is shown behind his right arm and shoulder. 

Cut-throat euchre is a variation of euchre for three players thought to have originated in Cornwall.  It was then exported with Cornish ŽmigrŽs to the USA and elsewhere.  Two players join forces to play against a third.  The players in this game do not appear to be gambling for money - an activity which would have been frowned upon in the strict Primitive Methodist community of the time. 

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