LONDON.- Dickinson announced that, late last year, it completed the sale of The Hazard Table by Phillipe Mercier to the Beefsteak Club, a West End institution with which the picture shares much history.

The current Beefsteak Club was established in 1876, rising from the ashes of its antecedent, the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks, whose doors closed almost a decade earlier. The origins of the Society of Beefsteaks are relatively obscure, but we know that it was founded in 1735 by the theatre manager, Richard Rich, along with the painter George Lambert. The tale goes that Lambert, too absorbed with his work to dine in company, would grill steaks for himself on a gridiron on his studio stove. From this, the patriotic dining club the Society of Beefsteaks was born, founded on the principles that an Englishman must be in possession of ‘Beef and Liberty’, these word still being the club’s motto. Originally, membership was capped at 24, the club’s number mostly being made up of painters and West End theatre impresarios – William Hogarth, Thomas Hudson and Francis Hayman were all early members. Over time, the club’s fame spread, and its membership came to include David Garrick, John Wilkes and the future kings George IV and William IV. Since its reestablishment in the late 19th Century, the club has maintained its theatrical and artistic connections, whilst including famous novelists, politicians and soldiers amongst its complement. Today there are over 500 members of the Beefsteak Club.

Phillipe Mercier was an émigré painter, born in Prussia, whose career was spent almost entirely in Britain. He was for a time, principal painter to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and was known for both his portraits and genre scenes, The Hazard Table being one of the most ambitious examples of the latter type. The picture shows a group of young men gambling at the dice game ‘hazard’. Mercier was evidently influenced by Hogarth’s gambling scene in his series A Rake’s Progress, painted a year or two before The Hazard Table. Such is the similarity that the painting was bought and sold as a work by Hogarth from at least 1782 until the late 19th Century. The Hogarth connection is not, however, he picture’s only link to the Beefsteak. Indeed, the painting was owned by three successive early members of the Society of Beefsteaks. In 1782 it was sold by Charles Kirkmann (who joined the Beefsteaks in 1739) to George Colman, a famous playwright of his day. It then appeared in Colman’s posthumous sale where it was bought by Josiah Williamson, yet another member of the Society, having himself joined in 1769.

Many of the artist members of the Beefsteak, Hogarth included, met at the Covent Garden tavern, the Bedford Arms. Remarkably, this picture is recorded as having hung there at some point in the late 1760s: ‘a picture of the Hazard Club at Stacie’s, the Bedford Arms. It filled a panel and was by Hogarth’ (J. Green, Odds and Ends about Covent Garden, London, 1866, p. 20.). The painting was later recorded in the mid-19th Century as being in the important Northwick Collection at Thirlstane House, Cheltenham. By the early 20th Century, it had made its way to the United States and belonged to the horse racing magnate Edward R. Bradley, who, rather fittingly, is said to have hung it in his Palm Beach casino.

The Hazard Table has a fascinating and distinguished history – it was owned by three successive members of the Beefsteak and hung in one of their famous meeting places. Today, the Beefsteak Club is housed in rooms on Irving Street, just meters away from the National Portrait Gallery. Irving Street adjoins Leicester Square, where Phillipe Mercier lived three centuries ago. The street is also at the heart of London’s Theatreland, a district shaped by the club’s members past and present. It is therefore most appropriate that The Hazard Table should return, after an extended exile, to its home in the West End, where it can resume its role in the Beefsteak’s history.