Paul Cezanne
The painter both Picasso and Matisse called the father of us all, working the same mountain for decades.
Paul Cezanne was born at Aix-en-Provence in 1839, the son of a banker who intended him for the law. He exhibited with the Impressionists in 1874 and 1877 and was mauled for it, then withdrew to the south and spent the rest of his life resolving a problem the others had not set: how to build a picture out of planes of colour so that it holds together like architecture rather than dissolving into light. Mont Sainte-Victoire, the bathers, the card players and the studio still lifes are the results, and the late work went directly into Cubism. He died in 1906 after being caught in a storm while painting outdoors.
Very little is on the market and almost nothing is unattributed: the paintings, watercolours and drawings are catalogued, and the Rewald catalogues raisonnes for the watercolours and the paintings are the reference any serious enquiry begins from. The watercolours — sparse, with large areas of the sheet left bare — are a substantial part of the surviving body of work and are extremely sensitive to light. Lithographs after and by him exist, as do a great many later reproductions that are regularly presented as period prints. Provenance is the whole of the question.
If you own a work by Paul Cezanne
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.