Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

  • AMMpro
  • AMM Fantasy Collecting Game
  • Podcast
  • Contact Us

Cashing In On Cezanne’s Card Players

March 26, 2012 by Marion Maneker

Perception often generates reality in the art market. Rumors over the past year that the Al-Thanis of Qatar purchased the last privately held version of Cezanne’s Card Players for $250 million generated enough interest in the works to smoke out a lost watercolor study for the work, according to Carol Vogel, which will be auctioned at Christie’s in May with an estimate of between $15 and $20 million:

Cézanne also made seven known drawings and watercolors as studies for the paintings. And “A Card Player,” as the one coming up for sale at Christie’s is called, belonged to Dr. Heinz F. Eichenwald, a prominent collector who died in September. Dr. Eichenwald, a pioneer in research on pediatric infectious diseases, inherited the watercolor from his father, Ernst, who is thought by Christie’s experts to have bought it from a Berlin gallery around 1930. When the Eichenwald family fled Germany and the Nazis in 1936, they took “A Card Player,” along with works by Daumier and other 19th-century artists, to New York. Now Heinz Eichenwald’s widow, Linda, is selling the work.

In 2010 a critically praised exhibition called “Cézanne’s Card Players” opened at the Courtauld Gallery in London before traveling to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan last year. This watercolor was not included in the show, and the catalog listed it only as “whereabouts unknown.”

Interestingly, Vogel goes out of her way to suggest the Embiricos painting of The Card Players might not have been sold to Qatar presenting alternate theories of Philip Niarchos and nameless Russian Billionaires.

[Update: Josh Baer, who was the first to report the possible sale of The Card Players last Summer, thinks it more likely that  that the work stayed in Switzerland, changing hands without an intermediary.]

That only serves to underscore the fact that the study will sell on the generally accepted story that the painting was valued at $250 million whether there was a transaction at that level or not.

A Cézanne Resurfaces, Shedding Light on a Series (Arts Beat/New York Times)

 

More from Art Market Monitor

  • Christie’s Can’t Wait, New York Sales Move to October with $25 M. Cézanne AnnouncementChristie’s Can’t Wait, New York Sales Move to October with $25 M. Cézanne Announcement
  • The Cezannes That Never Made It to the White HouseThe Cezannes That Never Made It to the White House
  • Cezanne Stolen in 2008 Believed Recovered in SerbiaCezanne Stolen in 2008 Believed Recovered in Serbia
  • Discovery Claimed of Cezanne's Earliest WorkDiscovery Claimed of Cezanne's Earliest Work
  • Hopi Artifact Sale Provokes Outrage, But Native Americans Have No RecourseHopi Artifact Sale Provokes Outrage, But Native Americans Have No Recourse
  • Athena Art’s Frieze Auction Sale ReportAthena Art’s Frieze Auction Sale Report

Filed Under: Artists Tagged With: Cezanne

About Marion Maneker

Want to get Art Market Monitor‘s posts sent to you in our email? Sign up below by clicking on the Subscribe button.

Top Posts

  • Keith Haring’s 1989 Retrospect Comes to Sotheby’s London Prints Sale
  • David Hockney's $20m Pacific Coast Highway & Santa Monica
  • Tony Podesta's Secret Art Buying
  • Four of Picasso's Women Valued at $28m Come to Christie's from Rose-Walters Collection
  • How to Chant Like an Auctioneer
  • Roy Lichtenstein’s Top Ten Auction Prices
  • Basquiat's Last Girlfriend
  • Rare Photo Album by Dutch Street Photographer Bought at Auction by Rijksmuseum
  • Norman Rockwell's Not Gay. But Is He a Great Artist?
  • Christie's Announces $70m Picasso Self Portrait
  • About Us/ Contact
  • Podcast
  • AMMpro
  • Newsletter
  • FAQ

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor