The Card Players, Musée d'Orsay
The Card Players
Paul Cézanne · 1890s
01
Aix-en-Provence. The 1890s.
Two men. One table.
Cézanne paints this game five times.
02
The man on the left smokes a pipe.
Père Alexandre.
He worked on the Cézanne family estate.
03
His opponent sits across.
Nobody can name him for certain.
Most likely another hand from the farm.
04
A bottle stands between them.
Dead centre.
It splits the canvas. One half per man.
05
Five versions in all.
This is one of the barest.
The whole game.
Uncropped.
“treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone”
2011
Four of the five versions are in public collections.
The Met. The Orsay. The Courtauld. The Barnes.
The fifth was the last in private hands.
In 2011 it went to the State of Qatar.
The price was never confirmed.
Reports put it near $250 million.
Paul Cézanne
French · Post-Impressionism · 1839 to 1906
Sources · 6
- Musée d'Orsay: Les Joueurs de cartes, collection record
- The Met: The Card Players (models and Rivière's identification)
- The Courtauld: Cézanne's Card Players (2010 to 2011)
- Cézanne catalogue raisonné (Feilchenfeldt, Warman, Nash)
- Hyperallergic: Qatar buys The Card Players (2012)
- Artforum: Cézanne on solids and spaces