Paul Cézanne was born in the city of Aix-en-Provence in France. He mainly painted within the Landscape, Still Life, and Portrait genres, often depicting items like fruits and human figures.
In The Card Players (c. 1890 – 1892) Paul Cézanne depicts four men, three sitting at a small square table playing a game of cards and one standing to the left in the background watching the card game unfold before him.
There are various earthy colors in The Card Players by Paul Cézanne, from the browns and creams of two of the men seated at the table, which is also juxtaposed by the deeper blue of the jacket of the man sitting on the right.
Cézanne’s brushstrokes are seemingly tangible on the canvas and appear thickly applied in areas, furthermore, the brushstrokes appear haphazardly applied, some are short and choppy while others are longer and more evenly and smoothly applied.
There is a variety of lines in The Card Players. For example, the folds on the men’s jackets, specifically the pronounced patterned lines of the man sitting to the right, the folds on the curtains to the right, as well as the diagonal lines on the curtains, which create a pattern.
Paul Cézanne’s The Card Players depicts naturalistic or organic forms, in other words, his subject matter is figurative, and objects associated with the real world so to say – human figures, a table, a curtain, hats, smoking pipes, and chairs.
Cézanne’s spatial compositio depicts the scene as if we, the viewers, are watching the card game from a short distance away, and seemingly more angled from the right. There is a sense of depth created by how Paul Cézanne placed his figures.