The Card Players 1892

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The Card Players 1892: Paul Cezanne

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Paul Cezanne Oil Painting - The Card Players 1892

Keywords: Card, Players

Work Overview: The Card Players (Les Joueurs de cartes)
Paul Cezanne
Date: 1892
Style: Post-Impressionism
Period: Final period
Genre: genre painting
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 181.9 x 135.3 cm
Location: Barnes Foundation, Lower Merion, PA, US

The Card Players is a series of oil paintings by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne. Painted during Cézanne's final period in the early 1890s, there are five paintings in the series. The versions vary in size, the number of players, and the setting in which the game takes place. Cézanne also completed numerous drawings and studies in preparation for The Card Players series. One version of The Card Players was sold in 2011 to the Royal Family of Qatar for a price variously estimated at between $250 million ($266.2 million today) and possibly as high as $300 million ($319.4 million today), either price signifying a new mark for highest ever price for a painting, not surpassed until September 2015.

The series is considered by critics to be a cornerstone of Cézanne's art during the early-to-mid 1890s period, as well as a "prelude" to his final years, when he painted some of his most acclaimed work.[2]

Each painting depicts Provençal peasants immersed in their pipes and playing cards. The subjects, all male, are displayed as studious within their card playing, eyes cast downward, intent on the game at hand. Cézanne adapted a motif from 17th-century Dutch and French genre painting which often depicted card games with rowdy, drunken gamblers in taverns, replacing them instead with stone-faced tradesmen in a more simplified setting.[2][3] Whereas previous paintings of the genre had illustrated heightened moments of drama,[4] Cézanne's portraits have been noted for their lack of drama, narrative, and conventional characterization.[5] Other than an unused wine bottle in the two-player versions, there is an absence of drink and money, which were prominent fixtures of the 17th century genre. A painting by one of the Le Nain brothers, hung in an Aix-en-Provence museum near the artist's home, depicts card players and is widely cited as an inspiration for the works by Cézanne.[6][7]

The models for the paintings were local farmhands, some of whom worked on the Cézanne family estate, the Jas de Bouffan.[6] Each scene is depicted as one of quiet, still concentration; the men look down at their cards rather than at each other, with the cards being perhaps their sole means of communication outside of work.[8] One critic described the scenes as "human still life",[2] while another speculated that the men's intense focus on their game mirrors that of the painter's absorption in his art.

While there are, in total, five paintings of card players by Cézanne, the final three works were similar in composition and number of players (two), causing them to sometimes be grouped together as one version.[10] The exact dates of the paintings are uncertain, but it is long believed Cézanne began with larger canvases and pared down in size with successive versions, though research in recent years has cast doubt on this assumption.[11][12]

The largest version, painted between the years 1890–1892, is the most complex, with five figures on a 134.6 x 180.3 cm (53 × 71 in) canvas. It features three card players at the forefront, seated in a semi-circle at a table, with two spectators behind. On the right side of the painting, seated behind the second man and to the right of the third, is a boy, eyes cast downward, also a fixed spectator of the game. Further back, on the left side between the first and second player is a man standing, back to the wall, smoking a pipe and presumably awaiting his turn at the table. It has been speculated Cézanne added the standing man to provide depth to the painting, as well as to draw the eye to the upper portion of the canvas.[2] As with the other versions, it displays a suppressed storytelling of peasant men in loose-fitting garments with natural poses focused entirely on their game.[4] Writer Nicholas Wadley described a "tension in opposites", in which elements such as shifts of color, light and shadow, shape of hat, and crease of cloth create a story of confrontation through opposition.[5] Others have described an "alienation" displayed in the series to be most pronounced in this version.[3] The painting is owned and displayed by the Barnes Foundation museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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1. The Card Players is not one painting, but five.
Created between 1890 and 1895, this quintet of oil paintings is considered a cornerstone of Cézanne's "final period," when he created some of his most acclaimed works.

2. Their sizes vary greatly.
The canvases range from roughly 4 1/2 by 6 feet all the way down to just 1 1/2 by 2 feet.

3. These card players weren't betting men.
None of the five paintings show any money on the table for antes or pots. It has been speculated the quiet nature of the game combined with the lack of gambling could mean these men are enjoying a game similar to gin rummy.

4. The Card Players are spread around the world.
Though sometimes reunited for shared exhibitions, The Card Players share no common home. One that features four men and a dour-looking boy is a highlight of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. A similar piece that lacks the little boy can be found in New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of three that portray a pair of card players is on view at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Another can be seen at London's Courtauld Institute of Art, while the last is part of a private collection belonging to the royal family of Qatar.

5. One of The Card Players sold for a record-breaking sum.
As you might imagine, it costs a pretty penny to own art so coveted by prestigious museums. In 2011, Qatar's royal family paid Greek shipping magnate George Embiricos more than $250 million for the honor of owning it, setting a new record for the highest price ever paid for a work of art.

6. Whether The Card Players still holds that record is a bit of a mystery.
Because the sale between Embiricos and the Qatari royals was a private deal, the exact price paid for The Card Players is unknown. Estimates typically place the figure between $250 and $300 million, but such vague ballpark guesses make it impossible to be sure the painting's sale price is still the highest on record. However, its potential conqueror would be Paul Gauguin's Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?), which was sold in February of 2015 for "close to $300 million."

7. The exact chronology of The Card Players' creation is a matter of debate.
Art historians have long believed the paintings' compositions showed Cézanne had scaled down on figures (from five to two), setting, and canvas size as he progressed through the series. However, the findings of infrared scans of the pieces have called this commonly accepted theory into question. Instead, it's possible he used the smaller pieces to work his way up to the bigger, more complicated canvases.

8. Cézanne looked really close to home for his models.
The men who posed for the Provencal peasants playing cards were farmhands, some of whom were employed at Cézanne's estate.

9. Cézanne did extensive planning before painting.
During the five-year span in which he painted The Card Players, Cézanne created a dozen or so sketches and several painted portraits as practice for his series. The same farmhands were called on, sometimes again and again, to sit for these test studies.

10. Cézanne may have captured the café on location.
With so many tests of The Card Players uncovered, it's been speculated that these sketches and early portraits were made while the models posed in a local café. From there, the practiced painter used these pieces—instead of the living models—as sources for the final paintings. This theory is supported by infrared scans that show a great deal of sketches and repainting within the acclaimed works.

11. The Card Players defied the emotional convention of such a scene.
Similar scenarios seen in 17th century Dutch and French art were defined by drama, like drunken buffoons bickering, brawling, and otherwise behaving badly. But Cezanne’s take on card players was true to his style of muted emotion. Instead, his scene is so quiet it has been described as "human still life."

12. Thieves made off with one of The Card Players.
The Card Players now on exhibit in Paris was in the hands of bold burglars in August of 1961. It was the most famous of eight Cézanne paintings snatched from a traveling show in his hometown of Aix-en-Provence, France. Details of their recovery vary: Some sources say the paintings were returned a few months later once a ransom was paid, while others claim the whole lot was uncovered a year later in Marseille within an abandoned car.

13. France commemorated the heist with a postage stamp.
To show the depths of the national sense of loss over Card Players' theft, a memorial stamp was issued, creating a colorful marker for a grim event.

14. The Card Players may have been inspired by a visit to the artist’s hometown museum.
A 17th century painting by the Le Nain Brothers—also titled The Card Players—was exhibited in Aix during Cézanne's time there. It's believed that the baroque depiction of men engaged in cards was a powerful muse for the boundary-pushing painter.

15. It inspired Dogs Playing Poker.
Cézanne's Card Players was one of several notable muses for American painter Cassius Marcellus Coolidge's polarizing but popular series of paintings.

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