Post-Impressionism · 1894–95
Paul Cézanne 1839–1906
The Met · New York
Two Provençal peasants face off over cards in monumental stillness — Cézanne turns a tavern game into architecture.
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Watch the first minute here. The full film, with the painter, the history and a close reading of the details, is in Hear Art.
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Chapter 1 of 7
Look at this. Two Provençal farmhands, a card game, a plain table — and yet you are standing in front of one of the most radical paintings in Western art. Cézanne spent four years on this series in the 1890s, using local laborers as models near his family estate.
His goal was not charm. It was structure — to make painting as solid as the earth itself.
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