Card players

Cezanne's Card Players series from the early 1890s is currently on view in a mini blockbuster at the Metropolitan Museum. The series is based on Cezanne's studies of peasant life in Provencal. The Austrian painter Georg von Peschke must have seen the series in Paris during the 1920s before moving to Greece. He carried out his own version of card players in Skyros. As I prepare the first Peschke exhibition in the U.S., I think of artistic lineage. Interestingly enough, Peschke's Skyros' Card Players best resembles Cezanne's Card Players in the Barnes Collection. Peschke's Card Players was exhibited in Athens during the 1930s and was bought. My sketch on the left is based on a woodcut that is based on the original. I must now follow the paper-trail and figure out where and when Peschke saw the Card Players that ended up in Barnes' collection in Lower Merion, Pa. Strangely enough, the Peschke is coming closer than ever to its model.