( fl c. 1645–55). Painter, active in Paris. In 1978 Cuzin grouped together under this name 13 paintings previously attributed to the Le Nain brothers. With the exception of a Portrait of a Man (Le Puy, Mus. Crozatier), the pictures are genre scenes, some of them representing games of chance (hence the Master’s appellation). The stylistic traits shared by these paintings include a reduction of space to simple geometric volumes in which forms are delineated in bright light and shadows that are heavily accentuated, though not always corresponding very closely to the forms that cast them. The emphasis on scrupulously observed reality in the depiction of faces and draperies led Cuzin to propose that the artist responsible for these pictures was a northern, most likely Flemish, follower of the Le Nain working in Paris. The dating proposed was based on affinities with works by the latter and on the costumes represented. Among the pictures attributed to the Master of the Games are Soldiers Playing Cards (U. Birmingham, Barber Inst.), Dice Players (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), Backgammon Players (Paris, Louvre) and The Cheats (Reims, Mus. St Denis). Further works are The Gardener (Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.), the Family Meal (Toledo, OH, Mus. A.), the Rustic Meal (Detroit, MI, Inst. A.) and three outdoor scenes of Children’s Dances (e.g. Cleveland, OH, Mus. A.). Some of these scenes may be actual portraits.

Part of the Masters, anonymous, and monogrammists family