The Chess players

Chess was a game of intellectual competition and concentrated attention that attracted artists and writers throughout the nineteenth century as a subject for observing human absorption. Daumier's Chess Players, dated around 1865 and held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris, depicts two men in the grip of the game's demands — a subject that allowed him to explore the comedy and intensity of male intellectual competition in a domestic or café setting. Unlike the social comedy of his theater or legal subjects, chess creates a private world of two opponents, and Daumier renders their absorption with the understanding of a man who knew the game. The wood panel support suggests a relatively intimate format, appropriate for a scene of close, concentrated activity. Daumier's ability to capture absolute psychological absorption — the mind entirely given to a problem, the body forgotten — makes the chess players a companion subject to his readers, print collectors, and advocates deep in consultation.

The tight composition of two heads bent over the chessboard creates a strong downward pull of attention. Daumier builds the faces from broad tonal passages that convey concentration without literal portrait likeness, using the warm-cool contrast of candlelight or window light to model the absorbed.