Willem Linnig the Elder (1819-85), born in Antwerp, was the brother of Égide and Jean Théodore Joseph Linnig, and the father and teacher of Willem the Younger. He studied under Henri Leys, and worked for a time in Weimar.

Two soldiers and a townsman in sixteenth-century costume are playing cards at a wooden table by a large stone gateway; one of the soldiers leans forward to peer at the hand of the gentleman who is about to play; on the left, a dismounted rider and sentry. An etching by the artist of this, or a very similar subject, was published in 1854.