KEITH CHRISTIANSEN: Cézanne’s paintings of card players are among his most powerful works. He arranges the figures to form a composition as hieratic and fixed as an Egyptian relief. But he paints them with a varied brushwork that confers constantly shifting relationships. Conservator Charlotte Hale:

CHARLOTTE HALE: It's typical for Cézanne's way of working and really part of his revolutionary technique that he created this very active brushwork, in all areas of the picture, at the same time retaining tremendous structure.

KEITH CHRISTIANSEN: The sun-dappled wall and prismatic hues of the men’s coats, for example, radiate energy. But the figures, drawn with firm contours, convey steadfast calm. Cézanne was deeply attached to his native region of Provence, in southern France, and used local farmhands as his models.

CHARLOTTE HALE: The men posed individually for multiple sketches, which Cézanne then assembled on his canvas, a process that was clearly not without challenges for him. Technical examination that we undertook recently using x-radiography has revealed that he reworked the contours of the figures, the table, and the chairs many times, revising and refining the relationships between them.

KEITH CHRISTIANSEN: He changed the figure in the blue coat, for example.

CHARLOTTE HALE: In one of the sketches, the man's head is much larger and broader, and he seems to have made the head deliberately smaller on top of this massive body. I think that the massive monumental quality of the figures is part of their timelessness, part of what makes them so riveting.

KEITH CHRISTIANSEN: This is the first in a series of five paintings Cézanne made depicting card players. They are silent, timeless images that convey the dignity of the Provençal people he so admired.