"Cézanne's Card Players"

The theme of card playing has been a recurring one in Western art, usually as a way of providing a humorous snapshot of human foibles. In Paul Cézanne's hands, the idea became something else: a formal meditation on time, grounded in the stolid shapes of ordinary paysans concentrating on their hands. This show unites for the first time Cézanne's entire series of canvases on the subject, as well as related drawings and studies in oil.