Image

Previous 1 2 / 2 Next

Paul Cézanne

The Card Player, ca. 1890-1892

Description

Maker

Title

The Card Player

Year

ca. 1890-1892

Medium

Graphite and watercolor on wove paper

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Supports

Dimensions

48.6 x 36.2 cm (19 1/8 x 14 1/4 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

On verso, at lower right, in red crayon: PH / 138; at upper right, in red crayon: PH; at lower left: RISD Museum stamp

Type

Credit

Gift of Mrs. Murray S. Danforth

Object Number

42.211

Projects & Publications

Publications

Selection V

French Watercolors and Drawings, ca. 1800-1910

Cézanne

An Exhibition in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Phillips Collection

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

From Dürer to Van Gogh

June 5 - October 26, 2008

Cézanne made five paintings depicting card players in the early 1890s, using peasants in the region of Aix-en-Provence as models. He made drawings after his own paintings between versions in order to strengthen and make adjustments to his compositions. The RISD sheet was likely copied after the oil painting now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In the drawing, Cézanne simplified the human form, eliminating unnecessary or complicating details. The viewer is forced to read the areas of untouched paper as lighted, volumetric form.

French Drawings in the Time of Degas

August 19, 2005 - January 22, 2006

Cézanne and Degas had met by the late 1860s in Paris at the Café Guerbois, where they engaged in lively, if sometimes antagonistic, discussions. They both worked outside mainstream Impressionism, and they were among the most knowledgeable about art history and the most well read of their artists’ group. More so than most of their colleagues, they gave prominence to drawing: life drawing, copying, and studies for paintings. This drawing, after a figure in Cézanne’s painting The Card Players, ca. 1890-92 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), was made in preparation for another version of the subject. As a modern portrait, it would have had particular appeal for Degas.

Their mutual regard was long-standing. Degas acquired one of the first collections of Cézanne’s work, most of it just after the first Cézanne retrospective exhibition, organized by Ambroise Vollard in 1895. At this very time, Cézanne was copying a work by Degas.

Cézanne

September 23 - October 20, 1954

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is The Card Player with the accession number of 42.211. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.