Cézanne in her intimacy at Jas de Bouffan

Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône). The year 2025 does not mark any birthday concerning the painter Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). However, a year ago “Cezanne 2025”* in Aix-en-Provence. The city where he was born and died thus acts the importance he now gives to the child of the country, as evidenced by the acquisition and a first stage in the restoration of the farm, the gardens and the Bastide of the Jas de Bouffan, where he lived and painted by intermittent from 1859 to 1899. His last workshop, on the hill of the Lautes, opened to the public, was redeveloped as well as the course in the Bibémus careers who Inspired. Municipal museums participate in this celebration, in particular the Granet museum which presents a large -scale exhibition labeled “of national interest”, under the police station of its director, Bruno Ely, and Denis Coutagne, president of the Paul Cezanne company.

More than 130 works, loaned by museums and collectors from around the world, were gathered to document the work carried out by the artist at Bouffan Jas. This exhibition “ gets attached to the very genesis of the painter’s work, with a desire for completeness ”, Affirm the commissioners in the catalog.

Knowing that one of his big collectors is the Barnes Foundation, which does not lend his works, and that Russia holds essential paintings that it was not possible to ask because of the war that she waged against Ukraine, it was obvious that exhaustiveness was only a pious wish. Catalog tests mention these great absent. Among the works that Denis Courtagne admits that they “Lack painfully”, Young girl on the piano. Opening of Tannhäuser (1869-1870) represents one of the painter’s sisters and mother in the Bastide living room. Reproduced or not in the catalog, many other paintings have not joined Aix-en-Provence, such as Lawyer (Uncle Dominique) (1866) or Emperaire Achilles (Between 1867 and 1868) Yet of the Musée d’Orsay.

The highlight of the exhibition is elsewhere, in the reconstruction of the large living room whose walls have been painted in the plaster in several times by Cézanne who sometimes covered his own works. Thanks to an animation, visitors can include the complex arrangement of the scenes that have been removed from the walls and sold for cutting, with the exception of the upper part of what could represent the entrance to a port like Claude Lorrain, discovered in 2023 during the restoration of the house and remained in place. The commissioners fell the dispersed pieces, bringing together for the first time 68 % of the painted surface, known by the photographs taken before dismantling. They hopet “Involve a new momentum in search of the latest fragments”. It is suspected that many of them are in Japanese private collections.

In the footsteps of Jas

The whole course also reports on an investigation since the purpose was to determine what had been painted in Bouffan Jas. For the views of the house, the farm or the garden, the places are easily recognizable. Concerning the Portrait of Gustave Boyer (Around 1870), a recently rediscovered work, biographical elements allow it to be located there. No doubt either for The woman at the coffee maker (around 1895), whose wallpaper is recognized behind it, or the portrait Madame Cézanne in the greenhouse (1891). As for Peasant in blue blouse (Around 1896-1897), he posed a screen that belonged to the Cézanne and still exists. Analysis of still lifes often reveals their location, for example, the presence of a ginger pot that was part of the Bastide dishes. Thanks to such elements, Jayne Warman, in a catalog test, shows that the work of destructuring the space accomplished by the painter took place mainly in this laboratory that was the family property. If it is presented as an “outdoor workshop” where Cézanne multiplied the views of the garden, the landscapes are little discussed.

In the last part, the commissioners open up the prospects towards a “beyond Jas de Bouffan”. This evocation of the LAURES workshop, built in 1901 after the sale of the property, shows, without explanation, The sea at the estaque (around 1878-1879) and Bellevue’s house (Around 1890). These landscapes are part of what one might call the interior jas of the artist who is not addressed elsewhere. The territory he had appropriated and on which he experimented certainly exceeded the walls which limited the lands of the Bastide. His correspondence and the testimonies show him walking towards Bibémus, towards the Sainte-Victoire and even to the esta which he returned the same day or the next day. It was also true of Bellevue where his sister Rose lived, with his magnificent perspective on the mountain, and Gardanne where Hortense Fiquet, the artist’s companion, and their son Paul lived. It is obvious that many landscapes, which are classified as “Provençaux” and carried out on the motif, were in reality painted in Bouffan jas and testify to the formal research that Cézanne conducted there.