Paul Cézanne:
1839-1906
The logic of organised sensation

•1
Paul Cézanne
•b. 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, at the end of the decade when all the other Impressionists were born.
His father Louis-Auguste, was a wealthy hat-maker whose family had lived in Italy, and who had
moved to Aix about the age of 30. •In 1847 Cézanne’s father bought up the Banque Barges and founded
the Bank of Cézanne & Cabassolin 1848. Thus began an era of prosperity for the family. •At the
College Bourbon in 1852, Cézanne met Emile Zola & Baptiste Baille who were to become ‘the three
inseparables’ Cézanne was serious and scholarly, gifted in Latin, mathematics, history and
literature, and eloquent as a writer or poems and letters in his youth. Ironically, Zola beat him
to the drawing prize every year. •The three would go long walks along the River Arc, and bathe
there in the summer. The theme of ‘Bathers’ recurs throughout Cézanne’s work.
•In 1856 he began attending art classes at the Aix Academy, winning second prize in 1858.
•In 1859 Louis-Auguste bought the Jas de Bouffan a sizeable property to the West of Aix, with a
garden of 37 acres, formerly residence of the Governor of the Province. Here Cézanne learned to
appreciate the peace and quiet of nature. It was here too, that he was able to work most
productively as an artist. •To please his father, he began to study law, but his secret ambition
was to follow Zola to Paris and become an artist. From Paris, Zola sent him a work schedule for
each day, to keep Cézanne focused on his ambitions.

•2
Paul Cézanne
•Finally, his father relented and in 1861, Louis-Auguste himself accompanied his son to Paris.  He
attended the Académie Suisse, and befriended Pissarro and Guillaumin, but spent most of his time in
the Louvre, copying Old Masters (especially Delacroix and Rubens, but also Caravaggio, Rembrandt,
Velasquez and Courbet). This was the year that Courbet was asked by the students of the Académy to
set up an independent art school based upon a new aesthetic of direct observation of nature.
Courbet agreed: “Beauty is in nature and is met in reality under the most varied forms…Beauty, like
truth, is linked to the time in which one lives and to the individual who is capable of perceiving
it”.
•However, Cézanne found it difficult to adapt to the new environment, and perhaps trying too hard
to do too much at once, found himself back in Aix,at the end of the year,  depressed and working in
his father’s Bank after all..resentful and sullen.
•In November 1862 he was back in Paris, where his father insisted that he gain admission to the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He tried, but did not get in.
•Certainly his painting at this time was not likely to please the teachers at the Art School: it
was painted with a heavy handling, thick, sombre paint, highly Romantic in nature, based on
Courbet, Daumier and Delacroix.
•He was also enlarging his circle of aquaintenances: Bazille, Monet, Sisley and Renoir.
•He saw Courbet’s “Salon des Réfusées”and Manet’s “Luncheon on the Grass” in 1863 which had a
profound affect on him - The theme of amorous dalliance in nature, by the river was close to his
heart..
•In 1866 he sent two works to the Salon, but was refused again; This time he wrote angrily to the
Judges: “I cannot accept the unlawful judgment of colleagues whom I have not authorized to judge
me..I wish to appeal to the public, and have my work shown in spite of everything…”

•3
The Artist’s Father, Louis Auguste Cézanne, c.1865, National Gallery, London
•Oil on Canvas 167.6 x 114.3 cms
•Cézanne's father (1798 - 1886) was probably in his early sixties when this portrait was painted.
It was painted directly onto an alcove wall in the Salon of the ‘Jas de Bouffan’, the country
residence outside Aix-en-Provence which his father had bought in 1859. A photograph said to have
been taken in 1905 shows the portrait still in place, flanked by four paintings of the 'Seasons'
(Paris, Petit Palais).
•The handling is heavy and the anatomy clumsy and awkward. Whilst the head has some strong
character, the body, arms, hands and legs are clumsily arranged and the composition is awkward.
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•4
Antony Valabrègue, 1866-1870
J.Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
•Oil on Canvas 60.4 x 50.2 cm
•An early example of Cézanne’s vigorous portrait style.
•The handling is thick and direct, applied with the palette knife and broad brushes, like Courbet,
and reflects a new-found confidence in the artist, even as he is rejected by the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts.
•The tonality reflects Manet’s revolutionary new style, and the drawing and composition are more
coherent and successful.
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•5
Study after Rubens, c. 1870
•Pencil on Paper, 20  x 25 cms
•
•One of the many pencil studies Cézanne made in the Louvre.
•He was particularly attracted to Rubens, for the swirling rhythms and the way in which the
contours linked up to make one integrated form;
•Also for the dramatic and emotionally charged aspect.
•His drawings are sensitive and focused, moving from form to form around the interlocking contours
and conscious of the three dimensional modeling of the forms, from the furthest back point
(represented by the darkest shade)to that nearest the eye (represented by the white paper).
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•6
Paul Alexis reading to Emile Zola,
c. 1870, Sao Paolo, Museu de Arte, Brazil
•Oil on Canvas 130 x 160cm
•In Cézanne’s early paintings, the subjects are mostly drawn from his circle of friends and include
poets, writers and fellow painters as well as some imaginary compositions where the mood is
Romantic, dramatic and often emotionally or erotically charged.
•The handling in the foreground is very looses and sketchy and the figures are left largely
unresolved except for their faces. The composition is modern, like Degas, echoing the informality
of photography.
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•7
Diving figure, 1870
National Museum of Wales, UK
•Watercolour and ink on paper, c. 20 x 20 cms.
•Again and again, Cézanne returned to the theme of Bathers. It had a particular meaning for him,
wrapped up as it was with his childhood friendship with Zola and a time of peace and tranquility
•He missed his native Aix while in Paris, and eventually divided his time between Paris and Aix.
•The “Bathers” are usually painted from memory or imagination, as befits their dream-like or
nostalgic theme.
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•8
Paul Cézanne
•The second clear phase of Cézanne’s production coincides with his friendship with Pissarro in the
1870s, and the close insight into Impressionist technique that he gained from him.
•With Pisarro’s help, Cézanne mastered stronger composition and learned the all-over impasto
application of paint, which is scraped and scumbled over the surface to form an overall unity of
texture, which locks the form together. Colour is organised from lightest to darkest according to a
logical system of equivalence to nature. Shadows are never allowed to go too dark, but stay within
the scale of colours (as ‘darker’lights), and where ever possible, pure colours are sought out and
represented as such.  With Impressionism in the 1850s, a whole new gamut of industrially produced
colours, stretchers and artist’s materials arrives, and this has a direct impact on the speed of
production and the brightness of palette typical of Impressionism.
•
•In 1870-71 The Franco-Prussian War broke out, leading to the fall of Napoleon III, the
Proclamation of the Third Republic, The Armistice of 1871, and then the insurrection which set up
the first People’s Government in History (The Paris Commune). Courbet and many artists (including
Corot, Daumier, Manet) joined the Commune, but it was short-lived and in the week of repression ,
‘the week of blood’, which followed, Thiers put down all popular resistance. Courbet was arrested
and exiled.
•
•None of this appears in Cézanne’s work. He took refuge in L’Estaque and Auvers (staying with Dr
Gachet), with his new partner Hortense Fiquet, and carried on painting. His son Paul was born in
1872.
•This marked the beginning of the first great period for Cézanne’s work.
•In 1874, the Impressionist group formed and held their first exhibition in Paris in direct
opposition to the Salon. The show met with almost universal condemnation, and Cézanne’s work, in
particular, was singled out for scorn.(He only once exhibited with them again).

•9
The Suicide’s House, 1872-3
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
•Oil on canvas, 55.5 x 66.5 cm
•Considered to be Cézanne’s first Impressionist masterpiece. Painted in Auvers, the home of Dr
Gachet. Pissarro lived nearby in Pontoise, whose influence is directly visible in composition and
colouration. But the spirit, energy and feeling for structure are entirely Cézanne’s own. Colour
and light are already fusing as one, and there is a hint of what Cézanne’s brushstrokes were to
become: flat, transparent, yet solid.
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•10
Four Bathers, 1876-77
Private collection
•Oil on Canvas 38 x 46 cms
•Wherever he was, Cézanne returned to the theme of the Bathers. It was his dream to capture the
youthfulness, freshness and harmony of his childhood in these idyllic scenes. The unity of human
forms with nature is the goal. The means is to harmonise the brushstrokes and the colour
modulations in such a way that the whole scene becomes one. Background links to foreground,
‘in-depth’ and across the surface, and because the ‘depth’ needed is only pictorial, the space is
shallow and relief-like. The transitions from background to foreground alternate in a shallow space
which is quite different from the ‘box-like’ or illusionistic space of the Renaissance..
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•11
The Buffet, 1877-9,
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
•Oil on Canvas, 69.5 x 81 cm
•
•As the 1870s progressed, Cézanne’s mastery of still life increased. Here, the forms can be
controlled and placed by the artist to create the harmony between foreground and background, and to
permit colour and tonal transitions across the surface. Aspects such as lighting ca be controlled
and movement can be eliminated, permitting a greater concentration on the interactions of form and
colour within the painting.
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•12
Mountains in Provence, 1878-80
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
•Oil on canvas, 54 x 73 cm
•Around 1878, a new phase of Cézanne’s art began, his so-called period of ‘constructive analysis’.
•Here there is a greater organisation and selection of the forms of nature into a coherent
pictorial structure. Edges and directions are sought out which give unity and coherence to the
painting. Colour is worked up ‘all-over’ the surface in ‘patches’- reds echoing reds, blues echoing
blues. The specificity of objects is subordinated to their function within the painting. The
Landscape of Aix, and in particular the Mountain which towers over it, became a recurrent motif.
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•13
Self Portrait, c. 1880
Private Collection
•Pencil on Paper, c 25 x 30 cms
•Cézanne’s carefully analytic technique can be seen most clearly in his drawings, where the
structure he is searching for becomes most apparent.
•Starting usually with the point nearest the eye, or where two planes meet (the eye socket and side
of the nose), he moves out from point to point, across the surface, and simultaneously ‘into’ the
3-dimensional space of the subject, exploring the interrelations of sculptural form, plane and
light, through which a coherent form is constructed. The energy and direction of the drawing is
centrifugal, moving outwards to the edges, and fading as it goes, so that the point of highest
intensity is the initial starting point.
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•14
Mme Cézanne in Blue, c. 1886
Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas
•Oil on Canvas, 73.6 x 61 cm
•Typical of this ‘analytic’ period, the subject (sitter, landscape, still life) is placed directly
in front of the artist, and the contours of foreground and background are explored to find an
interlocking harmony. The individual parts of the whole have less function than the overall
pictorial construction, such that forms and contours can be ‘moved’ about as the artist focuses
more on their interactions. The brushstrokes are beginning to take on a more individual and visible
appearance, as single decisions in the overall construction.
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•15
Paul, the Artist’s son, c 1883-5.
Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris
•Oil on Canvas, 55.8 x 50 cms
•Here it is clear that the arbitrary form of the Chair back forms almost as much of the pictorial
structure as the head of his son.
•The head of the boy is not seen in isolation, but has to incorporate all the colours and forms of
the visible environment in which he is situated. The artist’s task is not so much to produce a
‘likeness’ but to be truthful to the interactions of colour and form which constitute the visible
world.  If this is done, the ‘likeness’ arrives anyway. The brushstrokes are developing their own
particular ‘patchwork’.
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•16
Still life with a plate of Cherries, 1885-7, Los Angeles County Museum.
•Oil on Canvas, 58.1 x 68.9 cm
•The work of the 1880s represents the first mature flowering of Cézanne’s personal style.  Now that
he has found his way, the colours become stronger, the drawing becomes tighter, the compositions
more complex and ambitious. Once Cézanne has found/created a coherent and logical system for
‘encoding’ the visible world, he can produce paintings of great inner strength and harmony, which
do not depend on slavishly ‘following appearances’ or tricks of ‘illusionism’.
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•

•17
The struggle of Love, 1880
Private Collection, USA
•Oil on Canvas, 38 x 46 cms.
•Lurking behind the increasingly ordered still lives and landscapes, Cézanne’s early passion is
still at work.
•Meyer Schapiro: noted the explosive violence of this painting. The black dog, bottom right, is the
symbol of passion.
•The dog is “Black” that accompanied Cezanne and Zola in their youthful walks in Aix, along the
edge of the river Arc.
•In this relatively late picture, we find no trace of the usual narrative, Bacchanalian attributes,
or other excuse to mediate the unbridled desire. It is a scene of pure Eros, let loose.
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•18
The Five Bathers, 1885-7
 Kunsthaus, Basle
•Oil on Canvas 65 x65 cm
•The subject of Bathers is a constantly recurring theme in Cézanne.
•It occurs from 1875-7, 1878-82, 1883-7, from 1890-4 and from 1898 until his death.
•The theme is originally a Classical one, but in Cézanne it is generally a happy and innocent one,
wrapped up with his childhood memories of bathing in Aix with Zola and friend.
•The purpose, for Cézanne is to try and compose a harmony between imagined figures and the
landscape, where the structure of the figures and that of the landscape are one.
•
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•19
Le Chateau Noir, 1885
Sammlung Oskar Reinhart,Winterthur
•Oil on Canvas 73.5 x 92.5 cm
•In 1882, Cézanne was at last accepted into the Salon, based on the rather humiliating grounds that
he was a ‘pupil of Guillemet’ (in fact this was the first and only time he was accepted to the
Salon).
•His father died in 1886 and he inherited a small fortune.  A crueller blow perhaps was his break
from his childhood Zola, who had published “L’Oeuvre” about a failed painter Claude Lantier in whom
Cézanne saw a clear portrait of himself. They never spoke or met again.
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•20
Nicolas Poussin 1594–1666
Amor vincit omnia (Landscape with a Cupid Leading Pan to Venus)
•Oil on canvas; 28 1/4 x 50 1/4 in. (97 x 127.5 cm)
•Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Gift of J. H. Wade (Inv. 1926.26)
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•21
A Path by the Lake, 1885-90,
Rijksmuseum Kröller Müller, Otterlo
•Oil on Canvas 92 x 75 cm
•“Imagine Poussin, completely done over again from nature and you will have a Classic as I
understand it”
•What he wanted was to make something as solid and coherent as a Poussin, but done just from pure
observation.
•To make of Impressionism, “Something lasting, like the art of the museums”.
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•22
Paul Cézanne
•
•“Isolation is what I deserve” Cézanne wrote to his young follower Emile Bernard, although by this
time he was beginning to gather a small group of admirers including Joaquim Gasquet, Gustave
Geoffroy, and Maurice Denis. The years that followed from the 1890s onwards represent the last
great flowering of Cézanne’s work.
•He retreated to Aix where he built a studio in 1899, close to his favourite motifs, and large
enough to paint his last great series of still lives, and Bathers, the culmination of his life’s
work. He also developed new work in watercolour which some would argue is the triumph of all his
work, like the String Quartets of Beethoven or Shostakovitch - intimate, apparently small scale,
but immensely powerful and perfectly structured.
•

•23
Cézanne’s Studio at ‘Les Lauves’
•After his family sold the Jas de Bouffan in 1899, Cézanne moved back into the city. But he soon
acquired a plot of land north of town on a hillside known as Les Lauves, within walking distance of
his apartment, and built a large studio to accommodate the three monumental canvases executed
during his last years known as The Large Bathers. The Atelier des Lauves, a two-story structure
that still exists, gave Cézanne the privacy he craved, while placing him closer to favorite motifs
such as the Montagne Sainte-Victoire. At Les Lauves Cézanne frequently painted outdoors. The
studio's garden terrace commanded panoramic views of the city and the surrounding countryside,
which he captured in the unfinished but magisterial late work The Garden at Les Lauves, c. 1906,
and in radiant watercolors, such as Aix Cathedral Seen from the Studio at Les Lauves, 1904–1906.
•
Lauves.jpg

•24
The Green Jug, 1887
Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
•Watercolour on paper, 22 x 24.7 cms
•Cézanne’s watercolours are studies preparatory to painting in oil, notes of strong sensations
before nature, afterwards to be rendered in the more permanent and solid seeming medium. They are
also solutions of those problems of picture making which were his lifelong obsession, and which, at
a certain period of his life, could be more easily settled in watercolour than in oil.
•
•In about 1883 Cézanne’s struggle to achieve the greatest possible modelling through colour had led
to a density of texture which the passage of time has made most beautiful to us, but which Cézanne
felt to be too congested. He wished to attain the same effect with far greater simplicity of means.
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•25
Montagne Saint Victoire with Large Pine, c 1887, the Courtauld Institute, London
•Oil on Canvas, 66.8 x 92.3 cm
•In the last two decades of Cézanne’s life he had increasing solitude, time and money to devote
himself solely to painting. He worked every day, all day, being driven out in a carriage from his
studio to ‘the motif’, taking with him a picnic for the day.  The carriage would come for him in
the evening and take him home.
•In between he worked consistently trying to match his ‘sensations’ of nature, to a pictorial
structure which followed its own ‘pictorial logic’ - Each glance at the motif judged form, colour,
tone, position, direction, and was then reconstituted by a single brushstroke on the canvas,
contributing to the overall pictorial construction.
•Any compromise, or any mistake, and the whole thing had to be started again, like building a
card-house, as we saw with Chardin..
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•26
Woman with a Coffee Pot, 1890-4
Private Collection, Paris
•Oil on Canvas, 130 x 97 cm
•Cézanne’s son dated this canvas to 1887, but Venturi sees it as of the same period as ‘The Card
Players’, which it resembles in the heavy simplicity, and solidity of the forms.
•The hands in particular are modeled round with dark blue contours to appear more massive and heavy
against the pale blue skirt.  The forms of the cupboards behind are brought in towards the
foreground to interact with the figure and set it off.
•
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•27
The Card Players, 1890-2
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
•Oil on Canvas, 45 x 57 cms
•
•Cézanne painted five versions of this subject. Earlier versions included four or five players.
This one is the culmination of his ‘synthetic’ period and represents his ambition to depict the
‘heroism of the real’, to find a method of capturing the real, taking it apart and reassembling it
as a set of interlocking pictorial components which have their own logic and their own structure,
independent of the reality of the subject or its ‘photographic’ representation.
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•28
Study of a Pine Tree, 1895
•Watercolour on Paper, 28 x 44 cm
•
•In spite of this lack of finish Cézanne’s watercolours give a satisfying sense of completeness.
For one thing because Cézanne concentrates all his resources on the essentials of a composition.
•Cézanne’s watercolours are a key to the understanding of his oils, and, in fact, greatly
influenced his oil technique.
•They show, for example, his uneasy relation with the contour which, he is reputed to have said,
escaped him, but which, in fact, gave him a dreaded sense of confinement.
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•29
Cézanne’s Studio at Les Lauves
•
•
•
•Cézanne’s Studio in Aix permitted him to work every day, when the weather was inclement for
landscape painting. He could set up multiple still lives on the various tables and dressers which
appear throughout his work, and compose his motif with the same recurring elements - skulls,
glasses, vases, jugs, and of course the apples and fruit which are still present in the space,
replaced regularly for the benefit of visitors.
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•30
Still Life with Milk Jug and plate of fruit, c. 1900, National Gallery of Art,Washington, DC
•Oil on Canvas 54.9 x 45.8 cm
•The Milk jug, plate, glass, and table top appear in numerous paintings by Cézanne. The objects in
the background are presumably stacks of Cézanne’s paintings against the studio walls at ‘Les
Lauves.
•The paintings of the 1890s onwards rearrange these familiar forms to make ever new juxtapositions,
much as Chardin had done - Cézanne even uses the overlapping table top or drawer at the ‘front’ of
the picture plane.
•But Cézanne’s ambitions are different, and more precisely ‘modern’. The world of outward
appearances is less important than the usefulness of the objects to form a coherent pictorial
structure, with a logic of its own.
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•31
The Red Rock, 1900
Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie
•Oil on Canvas, 91 x 66 cm
•A strikingly bold composition; the bright orange rock juts out over the path in the forest, cast
with violet shadows, against a bright blue sky.
•It breaks in like an intruder in an otherwise calm and ordered composition.
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•32
The Bibémus Quarries,
Aix en Provence
•Cézanne had a house near the Bibémus Quarries and often painted in the forest surrounding them.
•
•Sir Lawrence Gowing (Cézanne: the Late Years, Paris 1978) has traced many of the original sites of
Cézanne’s paintings, even individual trees which appear in his work.  The apparent awkwardness in
some of the paintings is often verifiable from the actual site.
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•33
Still Life with Milk Pot, Melon, and Sugar Bowl,1900-1906, Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan, Edsel &
Eleanor Ford House
•Pencil & Watercolour on Paper, 45.7 x 63.5 cm
•
Milkpot Melon.jpg

•34
Still Life with Milk Pot, 1900-6. (Detail)
•Pencil & Watercolour on Paper, 44.3 x 59 cm
• This work belongs to the artist's last and mature period.
•the two primary colors, blue and red, are used with boldness.
•A distinctive technique of Cézanne's, which was considered a daring innovation at the time, was
leaving part of the paper blank: the warm-toned paper indicating those areas of the apples which
catch the most light.
•

•35
Still Life with apples and Chair back, 1902-6, Courtauld Institute Gallery, London
•Pencil & Watercolour on Paper, 44.3 x 59 cm
•
•When the viewer tries to join up the right and left hand rims of the apple bowl, he or she
discovers that Cézanne has been looking at and rendering the scene in front of him from more than
one angle.
•The brushstrokes vary in size more considerably than in Cézanne's oil paintings.
•The transparent watercolor has been laid on in a way that keeps the whole pictorial architecture
in a state of pleasurable continuity.
•The painting is, as it were, complete at every stage.
apples chaie.jpg

•36
The Great Bathers, 1898-1905
Philadelphia Museum of Art
•Oil on Canvas, 208 x 249 cm
•The version of the painting with which Cézanne was most involved, and the largest canvas he ever
painted. It took him over seven years to paint. The brushstrokes are broad and free. There is
greater concern to create a symmetrical, geometrical composition, balancing the two groups of
bathers to left and right with the abstracted geometry for the triangular, sloping trees which
frame them and the landscape behind.
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•37
Still Life with a Melon, 1902
Private Collection, New York.
•Watercolour on paper, 47.6 x 31.4 cms
•John Rewald described the work:
•"A green melon, while not the central element of the composition, nevertheless constitutes its
focus.
•It is flanked on one side by an undefined object, possibly a mending-basket with white linen, and
on the other by a branch with leaves, presumably of an almond tree.
•The vivid texture of this branch contrasts with the large, circular shape of the melon.
•Further contrasts are provided by a blue glass in front of the melon, as well as by a single,
small round fruit, an apple or peach, whose yellow and red colours introduce a special accent.
There is no preparatory pencil sketch."
•He added that the background showed "more or less regular, vertical stripes" and said several
holes in the four corners can be interpreted as a sign that Cezanne devoted several sittings to
works such as this.
•It sold at Sotheby’s New York  in 2007 for £11,4 million.
Melon.jpg

•38
Paul Cézanne
•
•Cézanne’s mother died in 1898, and the family had to sell te Jas de Bouffan.  But by 1899 and 1902
Cézanne had some success at the Salon, even selling a work to the Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
•
•When Zola died in 1902 his collection of paintings was put up for sale, and it was the work of
Cézanne which fetched the highest prices - higher than that of his Impressionist friends. The taste
for Cézanne’s work was beginning to change.
•
•The Salon d’Automne, founded in 1902, to enable artists themselves to form the Jury, enabled
Cézanne to regularly exhibit his work and finally obtain broader public approval.
•

•39
Mont Saint Victoire, c.1905
National Gallery of Scotland , Edinburgh
•Oil on canvas 55 x 65 cms
•From 1890, Cézanne’s paintings take on a stronger ‘architectural’ structure.
•The components - patches of colours and thin, broken lines - create a ‘network’ of marks across
the pictorial surface which attempt to ‘contain’ and harmonise the various aspects of the visible
world which Cézanne has selected as his ‘motif’. Drawing, per say is not separable from precise
colour arrangements; “The closer the colour arrangement,the tighter the drawing becomes”
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Montagne Saint Victoire, 1905-6
Tate Gallery, London
•Watercolour on Paper 36.2 x 54.9 cms
•He limited his palette to green, blue and a few warm earth colours and adopted a spare and
delicate technique.
•What began as a discipline became a delight; and some of the paintings were clearly executed for
their own sakes. But they retain the evidence of their origin. No attempt is made at a full
continuous description of appearances; the white paper predominates and the eye leaps form one
cluster of colour to another.
Mte Ste Victoire.jpg

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The Garden at Les Lauves c. 1906,
The Phillips Collection, Washington DC
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The Garden at Les Lauves c. 1906,
The Phillips Collection, Washington DC
•Oil on Canvas, Unfinished
•
•Cézanne set up his easel on the terrace outside his studio; from there he had a view over a low
wall to the garden below and across to a panorama of the countryside surrounding Aix-en-Provence.
He explained the apparent abstraction that characterizes his late works:
•
•    “Now, being old, nearly 70 years, the sensations of color, which give the light, are for me
the reason for the abstractions, which do not allow me to cover my canvas entirely, nor to focus on
the edges of objects where their points of contact are fine and delicate; from which it results
that my image or picture is incomplete.”
•    October 23, 1905
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Cézanne at work on the motif, 1906
•In October 1906 Cézanne was painting his beloved Mountain when a heavy storm blew up and he caught
cold. He continued to paint in the next few days but finally succumbed and died on 22 October 1906.
•The Mercure de France observed: If a tradition is born out of our epoch - and I dare to hope that
it will be - it is from Cézanne that it will  be born.”
at work.jpg