The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds, c.1635 Georges de La Tour (1593-1652)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Georges de La Tour also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

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The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

A single playing card flashes like a confession: the ace of diamonds, half-hidden in a man’s left hand behind his back. Georges de La Tour makes that small rectangle feel heavy, as if it could drop with an audible slap onto the green cloth and end the game in disgrace.

Everything here runs on glances and fingertips. The cheat sits left, turned away from us, yet he twists his head just enough to check the room. Across the table, a richly dressed adolescent studies his own hand with self-satisfaction, his extravagant costume practically advertising his inexperience. Between them, two women choreograph the trap. One, in a pale gold dress and pearls, meets the boy’s face with a cool, level stare; the other leans in from behind with a glass of wine and the conspirator’s smile, her dark blue-green bodice pressing into the light. Watch the hands: the cheat’s secret card, the woman’s fingers at the goblet, the boy’s careful grip on his own cards. This is a ballet of deception, performed without haste.

Tour’s space is oddly flattened, arranged in parallel planes, as if the table were a narrow stage and the figures a frieze pushed forward for our scrutiny. Symmetries quietly tick away: front-facing versus profile, pale skin against deep shadow, satin sheen against matte cloth. The color is deliberately limited, closer in mood to his later nocturnes than you might expect from a daylight scene. Reds and tawny golds glow, but the surrounding darkness swallows any easy cheer. One might imagine the air is warm with perfume and wine, and tense with the soft rasp of cards.

Look closely at the way light settles on the fabrics. The women’s skin has that smooth, luminous finish that recalls Dutch Caravaggisti such as Ter Brugghen, yet Georges de La Tour stays steadier, more withholding. Paint is laid in broad, controlled masses, and along the cheat’s sleeve the black ribbon ends are touched with tiny, decisive accents that feel almost like punctuation.

Perhaps that is the painting’s quiet cruelty: nobody raises their voice, nobody lunges. In The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds at the Louvre Museum Paris France, the drama is entirely social, and entirely inevitable. You stand there, caught by the same calm that is about to cost the boy his money.