Chess in Art: Classic Chess Paintings

Chess in art collects all those artistic expressions about chess, especially classic chess paintings that have been created by artists throughout our history. Below there is a long list of chess paintings that I am expanding as I find a new one.

chess paintings
  • Artist: Thomas Eakins
  • Title: The Chess Players
  • Date: 1876
  • Location: Met Museum – New York City (USA).
  • Description, Classic Chess Paintings:

In this painting, the artist’s father watches a chess game between two friends in a Renaissance Revival parlor of a Philadelphia home. Eakins honored his father with a Latin inscription on the drawer of the chess table, which translates as “Benjamin Eakins’s son painted this in ’76.” A reproduction of a painting by Eakins’s principal French teacher, Jean-Léon Gérôme, hangs over the mantel. Eakins adhered to Gérôme’s academic lessons in his careful spatial construction and meticulous detail.

  • Date: 1886
  • Location: Museo di San Donato – Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena – Siena (Italy).
  • Description, Classic Chess Paintings:

In August of 1575, Felipe II organizes the first International Tournament in history in Madrid, and the Spaniards Ruy López de Segura and Alfonso Cerón, and the Italians Leonardo da Cutri and Paolo Boi participate. The winner would be the one who won three games and although he had lost the first two against Ruy López, Leonardo wins three in a row and wins with the victory. He received as a prize a thousand ducats, an ermine cape, and his homeland, Cutri (Calabria) was for 20 years exempt from taxes. Felipe II sent by letter his congratulations to Juan de Austria, regent in Italy.

  • Artist: Ludwig Valenta
  • Title: Partita a scacchi (Chess game).
  • Date: 1900 – 1915
  • Location: Artgate Fondazione Cariplo – Milano (Italy).
  • Description, Classic Chess Paintings:

The theme of the chess game that Ludwig Valenta interprets in different variations is included in this production, as a pleasant entertainment activity, as well as a social ritual for the bourgeoisie of the time. In the version on display, three elderly players gather around the chessboard, in a living room furnished with solid and sober furniture, vases, clocks, sacred paintings and landscapes, which give the environment a familiar and comfortable atmosphere, shortly destined to be overwhelmed by the advent of the First World War.

  • Artist: Edward Harrison May
  • Title: Lady Howe Checkmating Benjamin Franklin.
  • Date: 1867
  • Location: Yale University Art Gallery – New Haven – Connecticut (USA).
  • Description, Classic Chess Paintings:

The painting belongs to Edward Harrison May, an American painter who dedicated a large part of his work to historical portraits and noble characters, this work is no exception, it tells the moment of a meeting that happened while Benjamin Franklin was in London in Dec 4, 1774.

This work was painted a year before the independence of the English colonies. The painting shows Benjamin Franklin playing chess with Lady Caroline Howe, sister of Admiral Lord Richard Howe and General Sir William Howe, who would soon lead an army to America. It is said that this was one of the meetings where chess was an excuse to hold a diplomatic meeting. If you want more information I leave this link: Ben Franklin’s Game of Love and War.