Players Pavel Fedotov (1815-1852)

Description of Pavel Fedotov’s painting The Gamblers

Pavel Fedotov’s painting is very peculiar. In The Gamblers, for example, the author tries to portray what is going on through the eyes of a hero who has lost, and for him his partners have become horrible phantoms.

The players spent the entire evening in mutual deception, competing, winning, and losing. All behaved passionately and calculatingly, but they were together. They were united by a table of green cloth and the light of a burning candle. And all the while the hope of change for the better smoldered. The night passed, and those who won found themselves on one side of the Rubicon of light, and those who lost - on the other. In the painting, they are separated not only by light, but also by the space of the room and the movements.

The loser is illuminated by two candles that stand on the table, so the figure appears as a kind of double halo of dark color. The winning figure is depicted by the artist with unlit shadows.

He doesn’t move, and they somehow wriggle. He has lost, but he does not panic or cry, but clutches the glass of wine in one hand and helplessly twists the other with his palm upward. Despite his loss, he seems ridiculous: he has an unfinished cigar in his teeth, and some kind of cartoonish grimace on his face, which looks like a smile. The loser looks like a madman, he is in a trance, acting aloof and silent, like a lonely spectator who looks at the actors from the stalls, the player looks at his fellow players, but does not see them.

The winners dodge the bright lights. They scatter in all directions. They are simply faceless, monstrous phantoms, punished for winning in incomprehensible agony. All three seem to have been portrayed differently by the artist, but they are all terrifying, lifeless, unnatural.

And these three empty souls wriggle against a bare wall where three empty frames and three reflectors of evil - mirrors - hang.

This is how masterfully Fedotov in "The Players" showed how people who spent time at the card table turned into empty shells.