Cezanne, it once was said, never sells well at auction. I’m not sure if that’s still true, but he sure sells well privately. Yesterday came the news that The Card Players, one of five he painted, sold for more than $250 million to the royal family of Qatar.
As my friend Alexandra Peers reports for Vanity Fair: “The deal, in a single stroke, sets the sets the highest price ever paid for a work of art and upends the modern art market… it more than doubles the current auction record for a work of art. And this is no epic van Gogh landscape or Vermeer portrait, but an angular, moody representation of two Aix-en-Provence peasants in a card game. But, for its $250 million, Qatar gets more than a post-Impressionist masterpiece; it wins entry into an exclusive club…”
The picture came from the collection of the late Greek shipping magnate George Embiricos, and as Alexandra reports, “was listed by ARTnews magazine as one of the world’s top artworks still in private hands” about five years ago.
For perspective:
The most paid for a painting at auction is the $106 million, paid last year at Christie’s for a lush portrait of Picasso’s curvy mistress Marie-Thérèse. Privately, works by Picasso, Pollock, Klimt, and de Kooning have changed hands in the $125 million-to-$150 million range, traded to and from by Ronald Lauder, Wynn, David Geffen, and the like. But no price has come close to this one.
There’s more intrique and detail in the article, which I recommend, involving Bill Acquavella and Larry Gagosian, who wanted to buy it, Pissarro’s grandson, and speculation about what happens next from Qatar. Here’s the link.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Vanity Fair
If you mean art market, yes. Though as you have said, most great art is not in private hands, what if his Great Bathers in Philly or one of his last portraits, Mt St Victoire or still lifes went on sale? This is “iconic’ as being in books, not meaning good. I only care for one of the single smokers paintings msyelf, he probably made 100 better. And his watercolors i saw ignored in the Met during VGs second show in the 80s the most beautiful i have ever seen. Ignored of course.
As far as the real art wrold, a very limited place unofrtunately but one connected to by far a bigger audience than inbred academic and effete Contempt toys and games, he is still the Father of us All.
But just think if teh Russians but tehir collectiosn of schukin and morozov on sale. Matisse Red Dessert would go for over a billion. Some Gauguins for even more.