The Cheat with the Ace of Clubs

The Cheat with the Ace of Clubs at the Kimbell Art Museum is one of La Tour's most celebrated daylight paintings, depicting a card sharp deceiving a wealthy young man while a courtesan and wine-server serve as accomplices. The painting is a masterful study of deception and human vulnerability. La Tour's nocturnal candlelit scenes—figures silhouetted against warm, concentrated light—are among the most poetic and meditative works of the seventeenth century, his Caravagesque sources transformed by the stillness and mystery of his Lorraine context.

The glances exchanged between the conspirators create a web of visual deception that the viewer can observe but the victim cannot, rendered with La Tour's precise, naturalistic technique and rich, warm coloring.