Sure Bets: Blog Spotlight #1: "Cézanne: A Connoisseur of Cards"

Christie's

 

ARTIST Cézanne

TITLE 'A Card Player'

AUCTION HOUSE Christie's

ESTIMATE $15 million to $20 million

For nearly six decades this watercolor, depicting Paulin Paulet, a gardener on Cézanne’s family estate near Aix-en-Provence, France, was familiar to scholars only as a black-and-white photograph. No one knew if the actual work, a study for Cézanne’s celebrated Card Players paintings, still existed and if it did, who owned it.

But it recently resurfaced, and the Dallas collector who had it in his home is selling it on Tuesday. Cézanne’s images of workers on his farm — pipe-smoking men sitting around a table, their expressions dour, absorbed in a game of cards — are among his most recognizable work. Executed from 1890 to 1896, they were the artist’s take on genre paintings made famous by 17th-century Dutch masters. Although not as instantly recognizable as “The Scream,” the watercolor is considered an art historical landmark, but one that will most likely appeal to the connoisseur collector rather than a speculator or a trophy hunter.

via nytimes.com

 

"Other Big-Ticket Items" - Blog #3

Paul Cézanne,'Card Player'

Est: $15 million to $20 million

The watercolor, a work that was long assumed to be lost and has not been seen publicly since 1953, hits the block at Christie's Impressionist and modern evening sale May 1. The work, depicting a red-nosed man in a crumpled cap, was a study for versions of "The Card Players," one of which reportedly sold for at least $250 million recently, a sum that would break the record for the private sale of an artwork.

Cezanne Becomes Priciest Painting Ever

"The oil-rich country has bought Paul Cezanne's painting The Card Players for more than $250 million, making it by far the highest price ever paid for a work of art. Up until this point, the most expensive painting ever sold was a Jackson Pollock for $140 million in the frenzied pre-recession year of 2006, and in recent days the graffiti artist David Choe was reportedly given Facebook stock options for decorating the company's murals in 2005 that cost mere thousands then but will now be worth some $200 million after the social-network giant goes public." Vanity Fair (2/3/2012)