The Lady's Last Stake

The Lady's Last Stake, originally entitled Piquet: or Virtue in Danger, is a painting by William Hogarth, c. 1759.

The work is a conversation piece, capturing the moment when the woman has to make a fateful decision: to be ruined financially, or morally.

The painting depicts a domestic scene with a man and a woman who have been gambling, playing piquet at a table near an open fire and in front of a Venetian window in a well-appointed Palladian mansion.

He offers to play one more game of cards: either way, he will return her assets, including the money and jewels in his tricorne hat; but if she loses, she must accept him as her lover.

The painting was hung in the similarly Palladian style Charlemont House in Dublin, until it was sold by the family in 1874.