The Card Players

Paul Cézanne, 1890 – 1895
The Card Players, Paul Cézanne
The Card Players, zoomed in
47 cmThe Card Players scale comparison56.5 cm

The Card Players is an Impressionist Oil on Canvas Painting created by Paul Cézanne from 1890 to 1895. It lives at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. The image is in the Public Domain, and tagged Men and Games. DownloadSee The Card Players in the Kaleidoscope

Playing cards has never been less fun.

During the Dutch golden age, paintings of card players were popularized by artists like Jan Miense Molenaer and Antoine and Louis Le Nain. Men and women lit by candle light, laughing and shouting and drinking and betting on a good hand. They were fun paintings, and 150 years later Paul Cézanne came along and bled all the fun out of the genre.

Cézanne may have seen Le Nain’s card player paintings in the museum in his hometown of Aix, but his own five paintings of card players are very different from the joyful Dutch works. Cézanne’s card players are all men, all stone-faced. The wine bottles on the table are untouched, the colors monochromatic. This painting, currently on view in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, is the last in Cézanne’s series. The scene is quiet, frozen. Two men in stark profile still as statues—a human still life.

Reed Enger, "The Card Players," in Obelisk Art History, Published November 05, 2015; last modified October 27, 2022, http://www.arthistoryproject.com/artists/paul-cezanne/the-card-players/.

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