The End of the Game of Cards

"The End of the Game of Cards" (1865), held at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, shows the aftermath of a card game among figures in seventeenth-century Dutch costume — a subject that allowed Meissonier to combine his beloved historical genre with a narrative moment charged with unspoken psychology. Card games had been a recurring subject in his career since the 1840s, and by 1865 he had refined the format to its greatest sophistication. The Walters Art Museum's collection of European academic painting is one of the finest in America, assembled by William and Henry Walters as a systematic record of the best European art of the nineteenth century. Meissonier's representation there confirms his status as a canonical figure in the tradition they sought to preserve.

The panel support carries Meissonier's finest finish: figures in soft indoor light, their faces registering the psychological aftermath of a game whose outcome has just been decided. Period card-playing equipment — the deck, the table, the drinking vessels — is rendered with the same collector's accuracy as his military equipment. The composition is compact, with the tension of the concluded game still present in the figures' postures.