The Card Players by Paul Cézanne | $250M Auction Record

Paul Cézanne created this oil on canvas work in 1895, during the height of the Post-Impressionism movement. The composition reveals Paul Cézanne's command of visual elements. Color, form, and spatial arrangement work together to create a unified whole. Technical skill serves expressive purpose, rewarding both immediate impression and sustained looking. The painting now resides at Musée d'Orsay in Paris, where visitors experience it firsthand. Seeing the original reveals qualities of brushwork, scale, and color that reproductions cannot fully convey. The museum's collection provides context alongside other significant works from this period. Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was a French artist associated with Post-Impressionism.

One version sold in 2011 for over $250 million, making it one of the most expensive paintings ever sold.

Cézanne painted five versions. Two-player versions are at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and reportedly in the collection of the Royal Family of Qatar (purchased for approximately $250 million in 2011). Larger versions are at the Barnes Foundation and Metropolitan Museum.

Cézanne painted local workers from Aix-en-Provence playing cards in a café. The subject let him study concentrated human figures in a stable, geometric composition. Card players sit still, which suited his slow, analytical working method. He made the everyday scene monumental.

The Royal Family of Qatar reportedly purchased one version in 2011 for approximately $250 million, making it one of the most expensive paintings ever sold. The exact figure has never been officially confirmed. The price reflected both Cézanne's art historical importance and Middle Eastern collectors' growing presence.

It's Post-Impressionist. Cézanne reduced the figures to simplified, almost architectural forms. The bodies have the solidity of cylinders and cones (his own stated goal). This structural approach to the human figure directly influenced Cubism.

The Musée d'Orsay version measures 47.5 cm × 57 cm (18.7 × 22.4 inches). It's the smallest and most concentrated version, showing just two players facing each other across a table with a wine bottle between them. The symmetrical composition gives the simple scene a quiet, almost sacred gravity.

The Card Players

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More by Paul Cézanne

Seascape

The Artist

The Artist

Landscape in the Ile de France

Self-Portrait

The Four Seasons, Summer

Also at Musée d'Orsay

Lola de Valence

A Country Brasserie, Brannenburg, Bavaria

Man smoking a pipe

River's Edge The Siene at Herblay

Related Post-Impressionism Works

Self-Portrait

Starry Night Over the Rhône

Irises

The Night Café

Almond Blossoms

The Starry Night

Portrait of Dr. Gachet

Sunflowers

About The Card Players

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