Description
Paul Cezanne – The Cardplayers
| Year of Creation: | 1890-1892 |
| Original size: | 44.4 cm x 56.3 cm |
| Paint style: | Post-Impressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | Muzey Orsey, Paris |
The oil on canvas The Cardplayers is just one of several paintings by Cezanne with the motif of male card players in a cafe. In this painting, the bottle on the table divides the composition into two parts, drawing attention to the light and dark tones of the clothes of the two figures. Cezanne’s oil on canvas The Cardplayers is not so much a portrait of two men as an exploration of the potential of color shades.
The painting broke the record for the most expensive artwork in the world. In February 2012, the Qatari royal family bought Cézanne’s The Card Players for more than US$250 million, surpassing the record of US$142.7 million set in 2006 for Jackson Pollock’s “No. 5 1948” and becoming the dearest picture. The Card Players is one of the painter’s most important representative works, the painting shows two peasants playing cards, accurately portrays the facial expressions and bent shoulders of the peasants who are carefully thinking while playing cards, and vividly depicts the inner world and personality traits of the characters. When arranging the relationship between the placement of the characters and props and the environment, the painter deliberately strengthened the shadow part of the outline and, with various triangles and right angle changes, emphasized the contrast between the brown-red tones and the blue, which not only emphasized the main character, but also got a stable effect of line connection structures.
Cézanne painted a total of 5 “cartars”, each with a slightly different image, to study the effect in different environments. The other four paintings from the Card Players series are all in the collections of major museums around the world, including the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Courtold Institute in London, and the Barnes Art Museum in Philadelphia. The only one in a private collector’s collection, The Card Players, considered the “darkest” of the series, was created around 1895. The work was once in the private collection of Greek shipping king George Amy Biliks, who rarely lent the work. In 2011, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York held a special exhibition for the “Card Player” series, where all four paintings in the collection of museums around the world were “present”, but the only one missing was his hand. Since the death of the Greek shipping king, the world’s biggest art dealers have been hoping to buy Cézanne’s “The Card Player.” In the end, the Qatari royal family offered $250 million for the work. This transaction price also broke the record for a single art transaction.
