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The Card Players is a series of oil paintings from the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne. Painted during Cezanne's final period in the early 1890s, there are a total of five paintings entitled The Card Players. The versions vary in size as well as number of players depicted. Along with the five completed paintings, numerous drawings and studies were undertaken by Cezanne in preparation for The Card Players series.

Overview

The series of paintings are considered by critics to be a cornerstone of Cezanne's work during the early-to-mid 1890s period, as well as a "prelude" to his final years, where he would paint some of his most well-regarded work.(Dorment)

Each painting depicts peasants of Provence immersed in the action of smoking pipes and playing cards. The subjects, all male, are displayed as studious within their card playing, eyes cast downward, intent on the game at hand. Cezanne adapted a 17th century genre of Dutch and French painting which had often depicted card games with rowdy, drunken gamblers in taverns, replacing them instead with stone-faced tradesmen in a more simplified setting.(Dorment)(Rosenberg/NYT) Whereas previous paintings of the genre had illustrated heightened moments of drama(Murphy/Time Life p.111), Cezanne's portraits have been noted for their lack of drama, narrative, and conventional characterization.(Wadley p.58) Other than an unused wine bottle in the two-player versions, there is an absence of drink and money, which were prominent fixtures of the 17th century genre. A painting depicting card players at a museum in Aix-en-Provence, near the artist's residence, by one of the Le Nain brothers is widely believed to have been an inspiration for Cezanne.(Salinger)(Gaunt)

The models for the paintings were local farmhands, some of whom worked on the Cezanne family estate, the Jas de Bouffan.(Salinger)(Rosenberg) Each scene is depicted as one of quiet, still concentration; the men look down at their cards rather than each other, perhaps the cards being their sole means of communication outside of work.(Barnett) One critic described the scenes as "human still life"(Dorment), while another speculated the men's intense focus on their game mirrors that of the painter's absorption in his art.(Schjeldahl)

Paintings

While there are five total paintings of card players, the final three painted by Cezanne were similar in composition and number of players (two), causing them to sometimes be grouped together as one version.(Schapiro?) The exact dates of the paintings are not certain, but it is long believed Cezanne began with larger canvases and pared down in size with successive versions, though research in recent years has cast doubt on that belief.(Murphy/Time Life p.119)(Tompkins Lewis)

The Card Players, 1890-92, Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania

The largest version, painted between the years 1890-1892, is the most complex, with five figures on a 134.6 x 180.3 cm (53 × 71 in) canvas. It features three card players at the forefront, seated in a semi-circle at a table, with two spectators behind. On the right side of the painting, seated behind the second man and to the right of the third, is a boy, eyes cast downward, also a fixated spectator of the game. Further back, on the left side between the first and second player is a man standing, back to the wall, smoking a pipe and presumably awaiting his turn at the table. It has been speculated Cezanne added the standing man to provide depth to the painting, as well as to draw the eye to the upper portion of the canvas.(Dorment) As with the other versions, it displays a suppressed storytelling of peasant men in loose-fitting garments in natural poses focused entirely on their game.(Murphy p.111) Writer Nicholas Wadley described a "tension in opposites", in which elements such as shifts of color, light and shadow, shape of hat, and crease of cloth create a story of confrontation through opposition.(Wadley) Others have described an "alienation" displayed in the series to be most pronounced in this version.(Rosenberg) The painting is owned and displayed by the Barnes Foundation museum in Merion, Pennsylvania.

The Card Players, 1890-92, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A more condensed version of this painting with four figures, long thought to be the second version of The Card Players, is displayed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. At 65.4 x 81.9 cm (25 3/4 x 32 1/4 in), it is less than half the size of the Barnes Foundation painting. Here the composition remains virtually the same, minus the boy, and viewers' perspective slightly closer to the game, but with less space between the figures. In the previous painting, the center player as well as the boy were hatless, whereas this version has all the men hatted. Also gone are the shelf to the left with vase and lower half of a picture frame in the center of the wall, leaving only the four pipes and hanging cloth to join the smoking man behind the card players. The painting is brighter, with less focus on blue tones, than the larger version. X-ray and infrared studies of this version of The Card Players have shown layers of "speculative" graphite underdrawing, as well as heavy layers of worked oil paint, possibly suggesting it was the preliminary of Cezanne's two largest versions of the series, rather than the second version as previously believed.(Lewis) The underdrawing has also led analysts to believe Cezanne had difficulty transferring the men, previously painted individually in studies, onto one canvas.(Dormant)(Lewis)

It has been speculated Cezanne solved this "spacial conundrum" in the final three versions of The Card Players, by eliminating spectators as well as any other "unnecessary detail" and displaying only the "absolute essentials": two players immersed in their game.(Dormant)(Howard) The scene has been described as balanced but asymmetrical(Rosenberg), as well as naturally symmetrical with the two players being each other's "partner in an agreed opposition"(Schapiro). The man on the left is smoking a pipe, wearing a tophat with a downcast brim, in darker, more formal clothing, seated upright; the man to the right is pipeless, in a shorter hat with upcast brim, lighter, more loosely-fit clothing, and hunched over the table.(Schapiro) Even cards themselves are contrasting light and dark hues. In each of the two-player paintings, a sole wine bottle rests in the mid-part of the table, said to represent a dividing line between the two participants(Rosenberg) as well as the center of the painting's "symmetrical balance".(Gaunt)

Postage stamp of The Card Players by Paul Cézanne, issued by the Government of France, 1961

Of the three versions, perhaps the most well-known and most often published resides at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. It is also the smallest at 47.5 x 57 cm (17 3/4 x 22 1/2 in). The Orsay painting has been described by art historian Meyer Schapiro as "the most monumental and also the most refined" of the versions, with the shapes being simpler but more varied in their relationships.(Schapiro) It is the most sparsely painted, and generally considered the last of the Card Players series.(Murphy 119-20) There is a shift of axis to the scene, in which the player to the left is more completely in the picture, chair included, with the appearance of being nearer to us.(Schapiro) His partner to the right is cut off from the scene at his back, and the table is displayed at an angle to the plane.(Dorment) Critics have described a "deception of restraint" in Cezanne's use of color; gradated area of thinly applied, "priming" color used for solid forms and their appearance of structure is met with lilac and green used to "liven" the canvas, as well as the bright, deep color used on the lower half for the tablecloth.(Gaunt)(Howard) This version of the series was also part of a high-profile theft of eight Cezanne paintings from a traveling show at Aix in August 1961. The most valuable of the stolen works, The Card Players was released as a four-color postage stamp by the French Government in recognition of the loss, all of which were recovered after a paid ransom several months later.(Murphy 119-20)

The other two-player paintings are held by the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and the private collection of Greek shipping magnate George Embiricos.(ARTNews)

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  The Card Players 1892-95
  Oil on canvas, 47.5 × 57 cm
  Musée d'Orsay, Paris
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  The Card Players 1892-95
  Oil on canvas
  Courtauld Institute of Art, London
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  The Card Players 1892-95
  Oil on canvas, 97 × 130 cm
  Private Collection