The Card Players 2 - Paul Cezanne Oil Painting for Sale

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The Card Players 2: Paul Cezanne

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Paul Cezanne Oil Painting - The Card Players 2

Keywords: Card, Players

Work Overview

The Card Players
Paul Cézanne
1892–93
Oil on canvas
97 × 130 cm
Private collection

At the beginning of the 1890s, Cézanne produced five paintings on the theme of card players. They differ in size, in the number of characters and in the importance of décor. This work is one of the many preparatory studies associated with this series.
It shows a card player who features in the two largest versions, but in a reversed position (Merion, Barnes Foundation; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) as well as in a scene with two characters (private collection), showing, as here, his left profile. The character with the drooping shoulders, now a "Cézanne figure", forms a solid mass, providing stability, with the other players, in the definitive compositions. His presence produces an effect of monumentality often found in portraits painted by Cézanne.

This simple man is in deep concentration, in absolute silence, so frequent for an artist. There is a mysterious or enigmatic quality to Cézanne's works on the theme of card players and several hypotheses have been advanced as to the order of their completion. The three reduced versions have carefully thought-out constructions that could indicate they were completed after the other two compositions, which are fuller, and denser in appearance although less developed. Characteristically, Cézanne would have progressed towards simplification, eliminating figures, reducing the size of the painting, and removing all the anecdotal accessories of the "genre scene". With its distinct appearance of a "study", The Cardplayer partly reveals Cézanne's approach to a theme: a "meditation" through successive preliminary works based on single characters. Usually drawings and watercolours preceded the slowly elaborated compositions, making this preparatory study, painted in oils, particularly interesting.

There is a shift of axis to the scene, in which the player to the left is more completely in the picture, chair included, with the appearance of being nearer to us.[10] His partner to the right is cut off from the scene at his back, and the table is displayed at an angle to the plane.[2] Critics have described a "deception of restraint" in Cézanne's use of color; graduated area of thinly applied, "priming" color used for solid forms and their appearance of structure is met with lilac and green used to "liven" the canvas, as well as the bright, deep color used on the lower half for the tablecloth.[7][13] This version of the series was also part of a high-profile theft of eight Cézanne paintings from a traveling show at Aix in August 1961. The most valuable of the stolen works, The Card Players, was released as a four-color postage stamp by the French government in recognition of the loss. All of the paintings were recovered after a paid ransom several months later.[11]

The other two-player paintings are in the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and in a private collection. In February 2012, Vanity Fair reported that the royal family of Qatar had, during 2011, purchased their version of the painting for a record price variously estimated at between $250 million and $320 million from the private collection of Greek shipping magnate George Embiricos.

Cézanne had certainly seen The Cardplayers, attributed to the Le Nain brothers, at the museum in Aix-en-Provence, his home town. During the 1890s, the artist tackled this theme of Caravaggian inspiration on many occasions, and gave an exceptional gravity to the confrontation. Cézanne substitutes subtle gestures and glances with bulky figures and characters in silent concentration.
The bottle, with the light playing on it, forms the central axis of the composition. It separates the space into two symmetrical areas, accentuating the opposition of the players. The latters are allegedly peasants Cézanne used to see at his father's property in Jas de Bouffan, on the outskirts of Aix. The man smoking the pipe has been identified as "père Alexandre", the gardener there.

Of the five paintings on this subject, this is one of the most spare. Here, everything comes together to give a monumental aspect to the composition, helped by the wonderfully harmonised colour range.

The recurrence of the card players in Cézanne's art in his last years has given rise to an interesting interpretation: does the confrontation of the two players symbolise the struggle which the artist had in getting his father to recognise his painting, represented here by the "playing card"?

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Qatar just shed its art rookie status for good. The world’s richest nation has purchased Cézanne’s The Card Players for more than $250 million, nearly doubling the previous auction record for a work of art. Vanity Fair first reported the story Thursday, confirming whispers that the record-setting transaction had taken place earlier in 2011.

The oil painting, depicting a pair of Aix-en-Provence farmhands engaged in a game of cards, is one of five works in a series by famed French post-Impressionist, Paul Cézanne. The remaining four—all believed to have been created at the turn of the 20th century—reside in collections from the world’s most venerable fine arts institutions: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Courtauld, the Musée d’Orsay and the Barnes Foundation. Qatar’s own Card Players acquisition puts the country’s art stash in the same line of sight.
But why so expensive? First, there’s the inherent value of a Cézanne. He was “the father of us all” to Picasso and a dear leader to Matisse (“If Cézanne is right, then I am right”). Then there’s the mystique of a masterwork rarely seen. Greek shipping tycoon George Embiricos preferred to keep the painting mostly private and reportedly turned down nine-figure offers to buy. All reasons the artwork was once considered one of the world’s top art pieces still in private hands.

And that’s exactly the kind of treasure Qatar craves. The oil-flush kingdom has rapidly asserted itself as a world-class intellectual mecca, courting top universities and financial institutions and muscling its way into cultural relevancy. That includes amassing copious amounts of premium art (both Western and Islamic) of which The Card Players will be its crowning jewel.

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