The Card Players

1890–92

Oil on canvas, 65.4 × 81.9 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Three men play cards at a small table while a fourth stands behind them and watches. An everyday rural pastime is painted with unusual calm and dignity.

The figures are fixed in a steady, balanced arrangement, and nothing happens. Older card-game pictures often warned against cheating; here the only drama is silent concentration.
He built it from separate studies of laborers, each of whom posed alone.
Look for the four pipes hanging on the back wall.
Conservation research shows repeated changes to the outlines and furniture before the figures settled.
It came to the Met in 1960 through the bequest of Stephen C. Clark.

The models worked at the Jas de Bouffan, the estate near Aix he inherited from his father. The series grew to five paintings; the later ones show only two players.

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access · CC0