The Card Players

Paul Cézanne painted five versions of The Card Players between 1890 and 1895, each progressively simpler. This version shows two men facing each other across a small table, absorbed in their game. A wine bottle sits between them like an axis. The composition is stripped to its essentials.

Cézanne used local farmworkers from his family's estate near Aix-en-Provence as models. He posed them in the studio, sometimes for over a hundred sessions per painting. The men's heavy coats and hats create blocky, almost sculptural forms. Their concentration is absolute. Nothing is decorative or anecdotal.

This version hangs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Another version, sold privately to the Qatar royal family in 2011 for a reported $250 million, was at the time the most expensive painting ever sold.