This is probably the first in a series of five paintings that Cezanne devoted to peasants playing cards. Enlisting local farmhands to serve as models, he may have drawn inspiration for his genre scene from a seventeenth-century painting by the Le Nain brothers in the museum in his hometown of Aix. The Metropolitan's picture was followed by a version twice its size, which includes the additional figure of a standing child at right (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia). In the last three compositions, Cezanne continuously pared away details, focusing on just a pair of card players.