Paul Cezanne - The Card Players Tile

The Card Players (Les Joueurs de cartes), painted between 1890 and 1892 in oil on canvas by French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne, presents three Provençal farm workers absorbed in a card game around a small wooden table while a fourth man stands behind them, arms folded and pipe in mouth. Part of the celebrated series of five Card Players compositions Cézanne developed during the 1890s, this is one of the two more elaborate multi-figure versions; the exact chronological order of the series remains debated. Cézanne built the composition from individual studies of laborers associated with Jas de Bouffan, his family estate near Aix-en-Provence, repeatedly adjusting the figures, chairs and table as he worked. X-radiography and infrared examination have confirmed numerous changes beneath the painted surface, including shifts around the figures and an unresolved hand of the player at right. The hanging pipes, heavy work clothes and simple furniture root the scene in everyday rural Provence, while the players' complete absorption gives the humble card game an unusual monumentality and gravity.