“Cézanne in Provence" at the National Gallery of Art

Thursday, 12 January 2006 12:23

Washington, DC.—The year 2006 marks the centenary of the death of Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), a founding father of modern art who created some of the most powerful and innovative paintings of the late-19th and early 20th centuries. His achievement celebrated in a major international exhibition of 118 of his greatest oil paintings and watercolors of Provence, its people, and its surrounding countryside. Cézanne in Provence is the first exhibition to explore the artist’s complex emotional engagement with his birthplace through some of his most original and compelling landscapes; penetrating portraits of friends, employees, and family members; and the monumental series known as the Bathers. Cézanne in Provence will be shown in the National Gallery ., from January 29 through May 7, 2006, and the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence, from June 9 through September 17, 2006, where it will inaugurate a series of events in honor of the artist to mark the reopening of the Musée Granet, one of France’s premier regional museums, after a major renovation. “Paul Cézanne was one of the greatest post-impressionist painters and has influenced generations of artists to the present. This landmark exhibition will focus on the sense he had of his own achievement, as a celebrant of the very particular and characteristic landscape around Aix-en-Provence,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. “The Gallery is deeply grateful for the cooperation of the many lenders worldwide and our museum partners in France, as well as the generosity of DaimlerChrysler in making this landmark exhibition possible.” Paul Cézanne and Provence The son of a banker in Aix-en-Provence, Cézanne along with his friends spent idyllic days of childhood lying under great pine trees; exploring the ruins of a Roman aqueduct; swimming and fishing in the River Arc; or climbing the rocky canyons to the Zola Dam and the foothills of Montagne Sainte-Victoire. The ancient history and natural beauty of the land became part of the artist’s persona. Cézanne pursued his passionate desire to become an artist despite paternal disapproval. After studying drawing and flirting with a career in law, he made several trips to Paris in the 1860s. There he studied the work of old masters such as Veronese, Tintoretto, and Rubens, and the modern giants Eugène Delacroix and Gustave Courbet, and met young impressionist painters, such as Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissarro. Under Pissarro’s influence, Cézanne learned to use a lighter range of color, to vary his brushwork, and paint outdoors. When his father died in 1886, leaving him a legacy, Cézanne returned to his native Aix, where he spent most of his last twenty years. Although he experimented with impressionist techniques in the 1870s, he soon grew impatient with them and reached instead for a more formal, structured style. An emotional man, he found stability in the painted depiction of nature, especially in the familiar countryside around his native Aix-en-Provence. In 1886 Cézanne referred to his birthplace as “this country, which has not yet found an interpreter worthy of the riches it offers.” At the end of his life Cézanne built a studio on the outskirts of Aix, where he painted a series of Bathers, considered by many to be his crowning achievement. From Aix, Cézanne wrote to fellow artist Emile Bernard, “I have sworn to die painting,” a vow he fulfilled, for he was found outdoors after a cold autumn rainstorm, lying unconscious beside his easel. He died a few days later, in October 1906, at the age of 67. The Exhibition Cézanne in Provence includes 87 oil paintings, 29 watercolors, and two lithographs that are presented primarily by theme. The exhibition begins with the artist’s family estate, the Jas de Bouffan, which is represented by views in its park, such as Chestnut Trees at the Jas de Bouffan in Winter (1885–1886) from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; portraits of family members, including The Artist’s Father, Reading “L’Événement” (1866), from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and Madame Cézanne (Hortense Fiquet, 1850–1922) in the Conservatory (1891–1892) from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and estate employees, such as Cardplayers (1893–1896) from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. The dazzling light of the Mediterranean coast is revealed in various views of the viaduct, rocky hillsides, and gulf of Marseille at L’Estaque, where Cézanne took a house in 1870. The exhibition is also a tribute to the memory of the late, preeminent Cézanne scholar John Rewald. In the study of the sites in Provence and their significance for Cézanne, the exhibition organizers have been aided by the presence of the original site photographs in the National Gallery of Art Library Image Collections and Rewald’s Cézanne papers in the Gallery Archives.

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