A painting a day · No. 35 of 38
The Card Players
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906)
c. 1894–1895 · Oil on canvas · Musée d'Orsay, Paris
The story
Farm workers from Provence, playing cards. Cézanne painted five versions. This one, like two others, pares it down to just two players facing each other.
Look closer
- The bottle stands exactly between them, like a line down the middle.
- They do not look at each other, only at their cards.
- The left player is dressed in light colours, the right one in dark.
Did you know
Another version was sold privately in 2011 to the royal family of Qatar, reportedly for more than $250 million.
Why we can show it
Paul Cézanne died in 1906. UK copyright lasts for the artist’s life plus 70 years, so even under today’s rules this painting would have been free for anyone to show since 1977. The photograph is a faithful copy of a flat work, which creates no new copyright. We do not store the picture: it comes from Wikimedia Commons each time it is needed. More on this.