Paul Cezanne - The Card Players Button

The Card Players (Les Joueurs de cartes), painted between 1893 and 1896 in oil on canvas by French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne, presents two Provençal farm workers seated face to face across a small table, completely absorbed in their game. Part of Cézanne's celebrated series of five Card Players compositions, this version shows how radically he simplified the subject: the spectators and additional players of the larger paintings have disappeared, leaving only two monumental figures, their cards and the bottle rising between them. Cézanne based the series on local farm workers associated with Jas de Bouffan, his family estate near Aix-en-Provence. The bottle catching the light forms the central axis of the composition and divides the space into two nearly symmetrical zones, reinforcing the opposition between the players. The man smoking a pipe has been identified as “Père Alexandre,” a gardener at the Jas de Bouffan. Heavy jackets and hats, the plain table and the players' restrained gestures transform an everyday rural pastime into an austere, carefully balanced scene of silence and concentration. The painting later belonged to Count Isaac de Camondo, who bequeathed it to the French national collections in 1911.