The Card Players1890–92
Three farmhands sit at a table absorbed in a game of cards, while a fourth man, pipe in mouth, stands watching behind them. More about this work
About this work
Three farmhands sit at a table absorbed in a game of cards, while a fourth man, pipe in mouth, stands watching behind them. Cézanne painted a series of card players in the early 1890s, using labourers from his family’s estate near Aix-en-Provence as models, and he stripped the traditional tavern scene of anecdote and noise. There is no gambling, drinking or quarrelling here, only stillness and concentration, and the figures are built up like solid architecture from blocks of earthy colour.
Written by Ochre Editions.
How it was made
- Oil paint
- Pigment ground in a drying oil, usually linseed. It dries slowly, so painters could blend on the canvas, build up thin translucent glazes, and rework a picture over weeks. Canvas replaced wooden panels in the 1500s because it is lighter and can be rolled.
Paul Cézanne
French, 1839–1906 · Born and died in Aix-en-Provence.
Cézanne divided his life between Paris and his native Aix-en-Provence. Encouraged by his schoolfriend Émile Zola and later by Pissarro, with whom he painted at Pontoise and Auvers in the 1870s, he showed at the first and third Impressionist exhibitions. He then withdrew to Provence and worked towards a more structured art, building form from patches of colour in still lifes, bathers and repeated views of Mont Sainte-Victoire. Younger painters, Picasso and Braque among them, saw him as a founder of modern painting.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Post-Impressionism
Artists who kept Impressionism's colour but pushed towards structure, symbol and feeling.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Met has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 61.101.1
- Credit
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Type
- Paintings
- Department
- European Paintings
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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More by Paul Cézanne
All their works
Close in colour
