ベジークの勝負

Caillebotte painted The Bezique Game around 1880 inside the smart apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann that he shared with his brother Martial, a composer, who sits at the right with a pipe. Bezique was a card game then in fashion in Paris, and Caillebotte simply set his own friends around the table absorbed in a hand, one man leaning in, another watching over a shoulder. There is no story beyond the game, only the hush of men concentrating in a comfortable bourgeois room. He showed it at the Impressionist exhibition of 1882, where it was listed first in the catalogue. Caillebotte had the money to paint whatever he pleased, and he spent much of it quietly buying his friends' work, the Monets and Renoirs that would later help found a national collection.