"The Card Players" by Cezanne sells for $250,000,000
(February 03, 2012)Qatar buys Cézanne’s The Card Players for more than $250m - the highest price ever paid for work of art
By Jill Reilly
Last updated at 5:47 PM on 3rd February 2012
Qatar has purchased a Paul Cézanne painting, The Card Players, for more than $250 million (£158.4 million).
The deal, for the post-impressionist masterpiece, sets the highest price ever paid for a work of art.
The previous record was said to be $140 million (£88.7million) paid for a Jackson Pollock in 2006.
Major investment: Qatar has purchased a Paul Cézanne painting, The Card Players, for more than $250 million. The deal, for the post-impressionist masterpiece sets the highest price ever paid for a work of art
TOP 10 MOST EXPENSIVE PAINTINGS
1. Paul Cézanne- The Card Player - $250m
2. Jackson Pollock - No 5 1948 - $140m
3. Willem De Kooning - Woman III - $137.5m
4. Gustav Klimt - Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer - $135m
5. Pablo Picasso- Nude, Green Leaves and Bust - $106.5m
6. Pablo Picasso - Garçon a la pipe - $104.1m
7. Andy Warhol - Eight Elvises - $100m
8. Pablo Picasso - Dora Maar au Chat - $95.2m
9. Gustav Klimt - Adele Bloch-Bauer II - $87.9m
10. Francis Bacon - Tryptich 1976 - $86.3m
The sale of the representation of two Aix-en-Provence peasants in a card game more than doubles the current auction record for a work of art.
Which collection the Cézanne will join is yet to be revealed, as the sale of the painting has not yet been officially announced.
The secret deal was made last year, but has only recently been revealed by Vanity Fair.
Fine arts appraiser Victor Wiener told the magazine, '$250 million is a fortune.'
'But you take any art-history course and a 'Card Players' is likely in it. It's a major, major image.'
The sale had been rumoured for months, he told the magazine, and now 'everyone will use this price as a point of departure; it changes the whole art-market structure.'
The previous record was said to be $140 million (£88.7million) paid for a Jackson Pollock in 2006
The Card Players heralded the arrival of Cubism and several other artistic movements. Pablo Picasso himself called Cézanne 'the father of us all.'
There are four other Cézanne Card Players in the series.
The housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, depicts four men and is believed to be the first in the series.
Following that came a larger version, which includes a small child, in the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania. The last three depict just two card players.
As well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, the other pieces are housed in the collections of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris and the Courtauld, London.
Cézanne's work is said to have had a significant influence on Picasso and the development of 20th-century art.
He grew up in Provence, south-eastern Franc and originally trained as a lawyer.
After he moved to Paris he attended a private art school called the Académie Suisse and developed what was to become some of the world's most famous paintings.
