The Card Sharp on the Boulevard

On a sunlit Parisian boulevard a motley crowd gathers around a trestle table where a traveling card sharp, his back to us in a broad-brimmed hat, is cheating a young provincial at cards, while beside him a boy drinks at the table’s edge and, to the right, an accomplice pockets the winnings under the beard of a gawping onlooker. Louis-Léopold Boilly painted the scene in 1806, at the height of his fame as the great chronicler of Parisian street life, and the picture is a delight of anecdote and observation — dogs, children, vendors and strollers caught in a thousand small incidents, the buildings of the boulevard receding behind the trees. It is one of the most complete and lively of his outdoor genre scenes, the world of the new century surveyed with humor and affection. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.