Collection/1800s

The Card Players by Paul Cézanne

Three peasants play cards at a table while a fourth man, pipe in mouth, stands watching. Cézanne painted five versions of card players in the early 1890s, using farmhands from his family’s estate near Aix-en-Provence as models.

There is no story and almost no movement. Cézanne was interested in the solid, block-like shapes of the figures. One of the other versions sold in 2011 for a reported $250 million.