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February 4, 2012 (Alarabiya with Agencies)
The Qatari royal family has paid £158million ($250 million) for Paul Cezanne’s “The Card Players” painting, making it the highest sum ever paid for an art work according to The Telegraph.
The sale beats the previous record of £88.7?million paid for Jackson Pollock’s “No 5, 1948” in 2006 the British newspaper reported on Friday.
Victor Wiener, a leading art appraiser was quoted by the newspaper as saying: “You take any art history course and a Card Players is likely to be in it. It’s a major, major image.
“Now everyone will use this price as a point of departure. It changes the whole art-market structure.”
Although the Qatari royals bought the piece last year from Greek shipping magnate George Embiricos, the amount they paid was disclosed on Friday in an article in Vanity Fair magazine.
The details are coming out as “a slew of VIP collectors, curators and dealers head to Qatar for the opening of a Takashi Murakami blockbuster that was recently on view in the Palace of Versailles,” writes the magazine.
Qatar is pitching itself as a new destination in the art world as it is hosting exhibits by Richard Serra, Louise Bourgeois and will host an international art forum in March to attract major artists and curators.
The Art Newspaper ranked Qatar as the world’s biggest art buyer last year citing the king’s daughter, Sheikha Al Mayassa, as “a driving force behind the attempt to turn the oil-rich desert state into a cultural center to rival Paris and New York.”
Qatar has in the recent past bought Mark Rothko’s “White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)” and Damien Hirst’s pill cabinet “Lullaby Spring.”
Cezanne’s other four pieces from the series, created around the 1890s, are held by Musée d’Orsay in Paris, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Courtauld Institute in London and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.
The previous owner Embiricos is believed to have turned down offers by two of the world’s top art dealers, Larry Gagosian and William Acquavella, which had gone up to £139?million before the Qatari royal family stepped in.
Nicolai Iljine, an art consultant for the Guggenheim, is quoted by The Telegraph as saying: “There is not much great art left on the market and there is a lot of competition to get it.”
