In our eighth season, we’re exploring examples of some of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction considering why they garnered so much money, and discovering their backstories. Today: Paul Cézanne’s The Card Players.

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Episode Credits:

Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Theme music by Alex Davis.  Additional writing and research by Grace Harlow.

ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.

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Links and further resources

Mental Floss: 15 Things You Should Know About Cézanne's The Card Players

Vanity Fair: Qatar Purchases Cézanne’s The Card Players for More Than $250 Million, Highest Price Ever for a Work of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Cézanne's Card Players Series United in Landmark Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum

The Daily Beast: What is Qatar Hiding Behind Its Expensive Love of Art?

Artnet: Tracking The Rise and Fall of Qatar’s Art Scene

Khan Academy: Cézanne, Card Players

Episode Transcript

For better or for worse, there’s that list of big name artists that everyone in museums clamors for. A list of the folks who will draw in crowds, the ones that the general public will know, will be familiar with, will want to see. But you can imagine that if your institution doesn’t already own a Pablo Picasso Cubist masterpiece, for example, that they aren’t necessarily easy to come by. There’s not a ton of them just lying around, waiting to be snatched up, and even if there were, it likely wouldn’t be for pennies on the dollar. Art is just expensive. And even will million-dollar acquisition funds available (and really, how many museums and institutions actually have that kind of cash lying around), you’ve gotta be really lucky, and in the right place at the right time, to nab one of those coveted artworks. This is extremely rare for the vast majority of museums around the world. But when you’re living the big life in a super oil-rich country, things are just a bit easier for you, especially when it comes to spending big and grabbing those canvases. 

Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs are weirder, more outrageous, or more fun than you can imagine. This season, season eight, we’re exploring examples of some of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction and considering why they garnered so much money, continuing with Paul Cézanne’sThe Card Players. This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.

I have to admit that it is a bit shocking to me that I’ve made it all the way to Season 8 of this podcast-- almost 4 ½ years into beginning this show-- and I’ve barely talked at all about Paul Cézanne. This show isn’t a survey of art history, and the format, of exploring the weird little elements or unexpected parts of art history, means that we definitely don’t or can’t cover everything-- not even close-- but still, Cézanne is such a biggie, because he’s one of those critical people, one of the artists who bridged the gap between Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, a man often claimed as one of the fathers of Modern art, and indeed, Pablo Picasso himself admired him so much that he claimed Cézanne as, quote, “the father to us all.” 

Paul Cézanne was born in the beautiful town of Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France, in 1839. His father, Louis, was a notable banker who co-founded his own prosperous banking firm, and this financial connection was both a boon and a burden to the young Paul. His father wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and become engaged in banking and investments, but Paul wasn’t into the idea. He loved art, of course, and his father didn’t--and thus their relationship remained strained throughout their lifetimes. However, Louis Cézanne’s success meant that Paul was financially secure and able to pursue options that many of his contemporaries couldn’t, and so even though he was very dependent on his family until his father’s death in 1886, it was still money, and money was useful. It especially came in handy in 1861, when at age 22, Paul Cézanne left Aix and relocated to Paris alongside one of his best friends, the writer Emile Zola, who also grew up in Aix. The move to Paris was an important one for both men, but especially for Cézanne, who was largely a self-taught artist. Though he took a handful of drawing classes in Aix while growing up, it wasn’t until he moved to Paris that his work really took off. Not that he was able to jump into much professional training in Paris, though-- he attempted to enroll at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but alas, he wasn’t admitted. So, with his scrappy self-confidence, he continued teaching himself how to be a painter. He visited the Louvre to study works by favorites like Titian, Rubens, and Michelangelo, and enjoyed exhibitions and connections with Impressionists like Monet and Renoir. The connections with these painters bolstered his confidence further, and he--like many of the artists he knew-- made a play for inclusion in the annual exhibition of the Paris Salon. We’ve spoken many times of the Salon here on the ArtCurious podcast, but as a bit of a refresher, remember that up to this point in history, it was almost imperative for an artist to be included in the Salon to make it big as an artist. And the Salon, like Cézanne’s own father, was not a fan of the artist’s works. He was rejected for inclusion every year of the 1860s that he attempted admission. He was included in the famed Salon des Refusés in 1863, the exhibition that showcased work by those artists rejected from the official Salon, but that experience rattled Cézanne. The show was slammed by many critics, and Cézanne took it hard. It was so affecting to him that he began to spend more and more time away from Paris, finding the art world too harsh and demanding in Paris. He enjoyed Provence and the South much more.

A brief move to L’Estaque, back in the South of France, was an important move that changed Cézanne’s works for the better. Her earlier work from the 1860s was darker, with thick layers of paint, but the brightness and light of the South of France--as well as a friendship with Camille Pissarro, a fellow painter--moved him to develop a brighter palette of paint colors and shorter, smaller brushstrokes-- very Impressionist, of course. When he returned to Paris on the rare occasions, he did attempt, more and more, to show at the Salon, but he was only accepted for exhibition there once, in 1882. He also shared works in two of the Impressionist exhibitions, but he was different. His works were different. Though he was good friends with many of the Impressionists, his self-isolation away from Paris and lack of formal education meant that he developed his own unique style, different from anyone and anything else. For example, he wasn’t really interested in the transience of light and the moment the way that the Impressionists were, all quick and flitting in their renditions. Instead, he sought what he considered to be true or permanent qualities, attempting to understand a subject’s essence and then realizing that essence onto canvas via form, color, and spatial relationships. He would do this in canvases throughout the rest of his life, in both portraits and still lifes, landscapes and in various classically-inspired scenes. It nourished him, sustained him, and these pursuits captivated him all the way until his death in 1906 in Aix-en-Provence at the age of 67. 

On the surface, this might not sound like much, but the legacy of Paul Cézanne and his work is huge. He liberated color from form, and form and color from nature itself--inspiring not only Picasso, as we know from the quote above, but also Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, and the star of our very first episode of this season, Amadeo Modigliani. In short, he has been credited with paving the way for the emergence of modernism in the 20th century and beyond, allowing for aesthetic undertakings based on subjective viewpoints rather than pictorial reality. 

Coming up next: we dig into Cézanne’s mature period and the simple scene of leisure that captivated him for five years--and the art market many years later. Stay with us. 

Welcome back to ArtCurious.

During Paul Cézanne’s so-called “mature” period-- when much of his best-known and beloved works were made, he began a series of five paintings, in varying sizes, based on the theme of men playing cards. Constructed over a five-year period from 1890 to 1895, these works, known as The Card Players are considered to be highlights of the mature period. They feature peasant men, most likely farmhands and other agricultural workers, some of whom were probably employed on Cézanne’s own estate. It appears that Cézanne became fascinated with watching these men in their leisurely pursuits, enjoying the drama inherent in a game of cards: the wins, the losses, the furrowed brows and laughter of victory. And there is an art-historical precedent to such works. In the 17th century, for example, scenes of game-playing became newly popular, especially in France and the newly-wealthy Dutch Republic, who were equally taken with the subject matter in order to create superb, practically theatrical, visual narratives. I’m thinking, for example, of two excellent paintings at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas-- one, The Cardsharps, a circa-1595 canvas by Caravaggio (more on him in episodes #47 and #55, if you’d like to go back to hear more about this awesome Baroque bad boy), and a French take with George de la Tour’s The Cheat with the Ace of Clubs, from around 1630 to 1634. Both of these works are psychological tours-de-force, all about deceit, suspicion, hope, and the like. We can imagine such a big story in each of them immediately. And it wasn’t just de la Tour and Caravaggio who were into these types of scenes-- the historical precedent can be found also in works by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and the Le Nain brothers, and even Honoré Daumier in France, and the tradition was taken up by contemporaries of Cézanne’s as well, like Edgar Degas and Gustave Caillebotte. 

Cézanne’s card players, though, are totally different. The two men here are both behatted, one wearing a dusky blue jacket and smoking a pipe, the other donning a cream coat, and they’re bent over their cards, elbows resting on a table with a burnt-orange cloth and a green wine bottle. It’s muted, neither flashy nor dramatic, the game not meant as a mirror or magnifying glass for human nature or personal foibles. But it’s exactly this quietude that’s so lovely about the Cézanne work. Such scenes have been described as human still lifes-- a frozen moment, a timeless incident of two friends relaxing together-- and it could be anywhere. It could be in France in the late 19th century. It could be in Alabama, now. It could be anywhere. And this was part of the appeal to the artist himself, who once noted, quote, “Essentially, he was saying that one should engage with art history but also modify it and take it in a new direction if possible,” and adding, quote, “One does not put oneself in place of the past, one only adds a new link.” This new link takes a time-worn scene and breaks it down into simple lines, brushy tones, and transforms an everyday scene into a moment of calm, of concentration. It’s intimate and friendly. And it meant a lot to the artist, who produced dozens of sketches and other preparatory works, including painted portraits of several farmhands, in order to produce his finished works, five in total.  

In the 20th century, Cézanne’s five paintings of The Card Players were spread out across the world, with four of them entering public collections-- the Barnes Foundation, now in Philadelphia; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York;  the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London—all widely respected museums where visitors of all stripes could enjoy these scenes. The Card Players, as a whole, were an enjoyable and important segment of Cézanne’s overall artistic output, especially during that mature period of his career, but it wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that the series became valued even more. And fascinatingly, the reasoning for this increase in popularity is one of the same reasons that the Mona Lisa shot to fame only decades earlier: a big ol’ art theft. In 1961, the Musée d'Orsay’s version was on tour as part of a traveling exhibition of Cézanne’s works. When it hit Cézanne’s own hometown of Aix-en-Provence, The Card Players--alongside seven other Cézanne pieces-- were stolen. This story has a happy ending, though-- thank goodness-- because the paintings were returned a few months later, most likely after a ransom was paid to ensure their return (although some have disputed this tale). The French government chose an image of The Card Players to promote on a commemorative postage stamp-- as the most valuable work stolen from the Aix show, it was the most visible quote-unquote “victim” of the crime, and therefore the one that became the most famous and most identifiable. And of course the postage stamp itself meant that the work--and the series of four other paintings in general-- received more exposure and therefore grew in popularity. The theft really catapulted the series into public consciousness--and therefore, too, into art history. 

Now, we’ve noted that four of the paintings in the Card Players series entered public collections in the 20th century. That means that only one of them was held in a private collection, long understood to mean it was off-limits to most of us normal folks. It seemed like a taunt, a dare--the final piece of the puzzle to make a complete publicly-available set. Even the Met-- the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the biggest and most prestigious museums in the world, with obvious clout and name recognition, wasn’t able to secure a loan of this final fifth canvas, owned, at that time, by the Greek shipping magnate George Embiricos. The Met, in association with the Courtauld in London, combined forces to showcase the Card Player series for the first time in history-- but Embiricos didn’t lend. Embiricos, who died in late 2011, previously hadn’t lent his Cézanne to institutions, so the work was largely kept away from the public eye throughout his lifetime. And you can imagine that the combination of such a high-profile exhibition and its equally high-profile exclusion from said exhibition meant that this fifth Card Players canvas was thus super enticing and mysterious. And what that means is that a work of art is then super tempting to the wealthiest of potential buyers. Hint hint, wink wink.

In 2012, an article by Alexandra Peers surfaced in Vanity Fair magazine revealing some big, really big, art world news. One potential reason why George Embiricos wouldn’t, or indeed couldn’t, lend to the Courtauld or Met prior to his death: he had been entertaining offers to secretly sell the painting, something which his estate finalized, in late 2011, sold it for a head-splitting price of $250 million. That is big news enough-- a secret sale that, at the time, had broken a world record for the sale price of a work of art ever, surpassing the amount that had been paid the year prior, 2011, at auction, for a Picasso painting sold at Christie’s. In other words, the buyer went way above and beyond, in terms of the money spent. I mean, it’s not like the work was unimportant: we’re talking Cézanne, one of the biggest in Post-Impressionism, and a known and sought-after series of five exclusive paintings where the others were held in showy, notable institutions and as the focal pieces of a major exhibition. This would have been a significant moneymaker in any circumstance. But Alexandra Peers’s article makes a great hypothesis about that above-and-beyond price: as much as it was used to outbid other potential buyers, it was used to make a big statement about the state of art-buying on planet Earth--and the folks who now held the market in their hands. 

If you’ve been kind enough to get a copy of my book, ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History, (and thank you for doing so!) then you’ll probably have noted that I’ve written a whole chapter on Salvator Mundi, the purported Leonardo da Vinci painting that super-duper broke the record for the most money ever dropped on a single work of art when it was sold in 2017. That work’s exact ownership, at the time of the recording of this episode, is still a bit murky and it hasn’t been seen in public since its sale, but it probably belongs now to Muhammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. But it was supposed, for a time, to be headed to the Louvre’s Abu Dhabi outpost, one of the newly-minted art jewels of the United Arab Emirates. I bring this up to showcase that Salvator Mundi and The Card Players have something in common--and that’s the part of the world where they now belong. In the past couple of decades, the Middle East has housed the world’s biggest players in the art world, as several royal families have tangled to create the next big locale for art and luxury. And one of those big players is the royal family of Qatar, the itsy-bitsy oil-rich nation that really began these early scrambles for cultural one-upmanship. In 2011, the royal family was in the process of building a new museum to house the works it had begun to invest in, with the intention of making its capital city, Doha, a must-do on the list of any art world “grand tour.” Before the Cézanne sale, Qatar had already opened several high-profile institutions, including its Museum of Islamic Art, the Arab Museum of Modern Art and the Qatar National Museum, as well as touting its qualities as an intellectual hub, hosting not only the headquarters of Al Jazeera but also international extension campuses of Georgetown, Texas A&M, and Northwestern University, among others. This was a moment to shine, a moment to lavish funds and make a big statement, especially to its Saudi and UAE neighbors: Qatar’s purchase of the Cézanne rivaled them all. 

It’s a shiny story with a dizzying effect on the art market, one that, with our foreknowledge of the hullabaloo over Salvator Mundi, is still crazy-making. But there’s a darker side to this story, too-- in the years that followed the secret 2011 Cézanne sale, Qatar upped its own ante to pay yet another record-breaking amount, this time for a Paul Gauguin. But around 2015, whispers from within Qatar itself noted that its glittering goals to grab attention and money from elsewhere were done so at the expense of Qatari citizens, who were beholden to their country’s extremely conservative beliefs and, in some cases, were neglected, poorly paid, or ignored by their own government. Needless to say: it was all a bad look. And after a mid-2010s crash in the price of crude oil-- which provided for upwards of 70% of the nation’s wealth-- Qatar’s art buying spree and self-promotion as the new arts Mecca-- stalled. Now, it seems that a lot of it is in limbo-- and stuck in the middle is a world-renowned picture by Paul Cézanne. 

Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal, with additional writing and research help by Grace Harlow. Our theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, and our logo is by Dave Rainey at daveraineydesign.com. Audio production services are provided by Kaboonki, the silliest name in superb podcasts and video. Let them help you too at kaboonki.com.   The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. Please visit anchorlightraleigh.com. 

The ArtCurious Podcast is also fiscally sponsored by VAE Raleigh, a 501c3 nonprofit creativity incubator. We’re a fully independent podcast, and we rely on sponsors and donations to keep us going, so if you enjoy this show and have the means, please consider giving $10 to help this show, and thank you for your kindness. And if you don’t have money to give, that’s okay! You can help our show as well by leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen-- believe me, it makes a huge difference and helps new listeners tune in. For more details about our show, including the image mentioned in this episode today, please visit our website: artcuriouspodcast.com. We’re also on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at artcuriouspod. 

Check back with us in two weeks when we explore the unexpected, slightly odd, and strangely wonderful in the most expensive works ever sold at auction.