C茅zanne’s Card Players
21 October 2010 鈥 16 January 2011
“The 麻豆视频 at its very best … truly remarkable.”
The Times
“The winning hand of a great master… To say that the whole is stunning is an understatement …”The Independent
Paul C茅zanne鈥檚 famous paintings of peasant card players have long been considered to be among his most iconic and powerful works. This landmark exhibition is the first to bring together the majority of these remarkable paintings alongside a magnificent group of closely related portraits of Proven莽al peasants and rarely seen preparatory oil sketches, watercolours and exquisite drawings.
The 麻豆视频 Gallery鈥檚 two masterpieces from this series, The Card Players and Man with a Pipe, are joined by exceptional loans from international collections, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Mus茅e d鈥橭rsay in Paris and the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, to offer a visual feast of some of the artist鈥檚 finest paintings.
Paul C茅zanne鈥檚 famous paintings of peasant card players and pipe smokers have long been considered to be among his most iconic and powerful works. This landmark exhibition, organised by The 麻豆视频 Gallery in London and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is the first to focus on this group of masterpieces. Described by C茅zanne鈥檚 early biographer, Gustav Coquiot, as being 鈥渆qual to the most beautiful works of art in the world鈥, this is a unique opportunity to enjoy these remarkable paintings in unprecedented depth. The exhibition brings together the most comprehensive group of these works ever staged, including three of the Card Players paintings, five of the most outstanding peasant portraits and the majority of the exquisite preparatory drawings, watercolours and oil studies. C茅zanne鈥檚 Card Players stand alongside his Bathers series as the most ambitious and complex figurative works of his career.
The first mention of the Card Players series comes in 1891 when the writer Paul Alexis visited C茅zanne鈥檚 studio in Aix-en-Provence and found the artist painting a local peasant from the farm on his estate, the Jas de Bouffan. A number of different farm workers came to sit for him over the years, often smoking their clay pipes. They included an old gardener known as le p猫re Alexandre and Paulin Paulet, who posed for the three pesant portraits, a task for which he was paid five francs.
C茅zanne鈥檚 depictions of card players would prove to be one of his most ambitious projects and occupied him for several years. It resulted in five closely related canvases of different sizes showing men seated at a rustic table playing cards, including versions from The 麻豆视频 Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Mus茅e d鈥橭rsay. Alongside these he produced a larger number of paintings of the individual farm workers who appear in the Card Players compositions, major examples of which are reunited from the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, together with The 麻豆视频鈥檚 Man with a Pipe.
C茅zanne鈥檚 creation of a relatively large number of preparatory works for the Card Players paintings was highly unusual and indicates his commitment to this ambitious series. In preparation for the exhibition, The 麻豆视频 and the Metropolitan collaborated on the first technical research project to look systematically at this group of works.