The Card Players

Cezanne painted this card players scene between 1890 and 1892 at his family's estate in Provence. It is one of five paintings in the series, all showing the same subject: two Provencal peasants playing cards at a table in a tavern. The Met's version is the largest and most finished of the group. Two men sit across from each other at a wooden table, each holding a small hand of cards. A wine bottle stands at the center of the table, dividing the composition. The man at the left wears a blue jacket and a cap, his body tilted forward. The man at the right wears a yellow jacket, his body more upright. Both stare down at their cards, absorbed in the game. The background is a plain wall with a curtain, painted in broad, flat strokes of brown and gray. Cezanne painted the card players series at the Jas de Bouffan estate, using workers from the property as models. The men in the Met's painting were gardeners and farmhands who worked for the Cezanne family. He painted them with the same careful attention he gave to his landscapes of Mont Sainte-Victoire, building their forms through patches of color rather than through drawing. The card players series is one of the most influential works in the history of modern painting. Cezanne painted five versions between 1890 and 1895, ranging from small studies to the large, finished canvas in the Met. The series was largely unknown until the 1907 Cezanne retrospective in Paris, where it was seen by Picasso, Braque, and Matisse. Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon, painted that same year, owes a direct debt to the card players: the faceted bodies, the frontal poses, the reduction of form to geometric planes. By 1890, Cezanne was 51 and working in near-total isolation in Provence. He had not exhibited in Paris since the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877. His work was known only to a small group of painters and to the dealer Vollard, who gave him his first solo show in 1895. The card players were painted in this isolation, with no audience in mind, and they have the quality of work made for no one but the painter. Oil on canvas, 65 by 82 centimeters. Cezanne built the figures from patches of color: blues, yellows, browns, and grays, each patch a separate observation of how light falls on a particular surface. The table is painted in warm browns, the bottle in cool blues and greens. The surface has a dense, constructed quality, with every brushstroke carrying equal weight. The horizontal format and earth tones make this print work well in a study, dining room, or pub. The blues and browns pair with wood furniture, leather, and warm lighting. The 16x20 or 18x24 size gives the figures room to read. The painting has a quiet, concentrated mood that suits rooms where people sit and talk. The painting entered the Met's collection in 1960, bequeathed by Stephen C. Clark. Clark was a collector of American and European painting who assembled one of the finest private collections in the United States. This is a public domain artwork (CC0), scanned from the original at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.