Caption:
The Card Players. Artist: Paul Cézanne (French, Aix-en-Provence 1839-1906 Aix-en-Provence). Dimensions: 25 3/4 x 32 1/4 in. (65.4 x 81.9 cm). Date: 1890-92.
This is probably the first in a series of five paintings that Cézanne devoted to peasants playing cards. Enlisting local farmhands to serve as models, he may have drawn inspiration for his genre scene from a seventeenth-century painting by the Le Nain brothers in the museum in his hometown of Aix. The Metropolitan's picture was followed by a version twice its size, which includes the additional figure of a standing child at right (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia). In the last three compositions, Cézanne continuously pared away details, focusing on just a pair of card players.