The skyward angle of his arm casts both a diagonal shadow on the table and the illusion of spatial solidity. An elbow from the male rests upon the front left-hand corner of the table and is shaded in darker tone than the maid “behind” him. Some depth is hinted at by the brown playing table and the male and pointing female’s interactions with it.
The two outermost figures, the man with the tan coat and the woman with the pink sleeves, are placed in close proximity to the viewing plane, indicated by the man’s hand overlapping the maid’s figure and the woman’s hand overlapping the female figure with an intense stare. Dynamic limbs, fingers, and hands overlapping each other aid the viewer in discerning who is in front of whom. Accomplished through the overlapping of the four figures, illusionistic space is just large enough in scope to contain the subject matter, almost as if the viewer is given a window of an enclosed box. In fact, the maid also contributes to la Tour’s organization of space, which, in this piece, is very shallow and three-dimensional. The presence of the second figure from the left, seemingly a maid, counterbalances the composition by leading, with her right arm, the attention back to the starting point, the woman with pink sleeves, and with her left hand to the staring woman. The combination of her piercing eyes and the angle of her right hand shoot the focus back at the distrustful man, where the natural curve and angle of his head and back along with the bend of his left arm trail to discover the second focus of the composition: the two playing cards. The focus is then ricocheted from the angle of the man’s right wrist and cards to the suspecting gaze, the first focus, of the women in the central right, clothed in amber attire. Commencing on the right side, focus begins at the lady with rosy sleeves, one of which angles along the fold of her left arm to point directly at the cards held by the right hand of the cheat. La Tour discards utilizing any compositional tools of a detailed setting, and instead opts to purpose the humans, both through pose and expression, as guides for the spectators’ eyes and foci. This man, or at least the suspiciously held cards of his left hand, along with the intense stare of the middle woman, all serve as the focal points of the piece’s composition. The gentleman is presumably the titled “cheat”. Each player is distinguishable against the black backdrop by their characteristic vestments, expressions, and poses, of which the most out-of-place is that of the man on the left, who is obscuring from view an ace of clubs behind his back. Using oil on canvas, la Tour crafts a scene of four card players, one male and three female from left to right, surrounding a rectangular table. The painting examined is a work of 1630-34 by French Baroque artist, Georges de la Tour, titled The Cheat with Ace of Clubs.
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