PAUL CÉZANNE at AUCTION

May 15, 2017 Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), La côte Saint-Denis à Pointoise, oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 21 3/8 in. Painted circa 1877.
Estimate: $5,000,000-7,000,000

Also on offer will be an exemplary canvas by Paul Cézanne, La côte Saint-Denis à Pontoise, painted circa 1877 (estimate: $5,000,000-7,000,000). This landscape, which Cézanne painted during a visit with Pissarro at Pontoise, bears witness to the extraordinary creative partnership between the artist and his Impressionist mentor. Pissarro produced a view of the identical motif in the same year, the two artists very possibly setting up their easels side-by-side. The paintings both depict a cluster of red- and blue-roofed houses on the rue Vieille-de-l’Hermitage, just a short walk from Pissarro’s home. Equally significant, however, are the differences between the two artists’ interpretations of their shared motif. While Pissarro continued to work within the Impressionist idiom, Cézanne had already begun to experiment with an increasingly abstract construction of the landscape, transmuting the vagaries of the natural world into the forms of an ideal order.

Christie’s Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art Nov 16, 2016

Two works by Paul Cézanne, demonstrating the artists mastery of both watercolor,

Théière et oranges (La Nappe) (estimate: $8-12 million),

and oil, Paysage avec route et clocher (Île de France près de Melun) (estimate: $10-15 million),

his favored subjects of the French landscape and still life.

Christie’s 2 February 2016

Ferme en Normandie, été (Hattenville), 1882, by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) is being offered at auction for the first time in almost 20 years, having been acquired by the present owner in 1997 (estimate: £4.5-6.5 million). This is the largest of a series of four works that Cézanne created during a summer break at the home of his friend, the legendary impressionist collector Victor Chocquet, in Hattenville, Normandy. Chocquet, one of the first champions and earliest collectors of Impressionism, was also the first owner of this painting; it remained in his collection until his death. Painted at a time when Cézanne was reaching artistic maturity, this work exemplifies a crucial moment in the artist’s career, illustrating his move from Impressionism towards his own distinctive and highly influential ‘constructed’ style. Rather than a fleeting depiction of a transitory moment, this is a carefully considered and constructed composition, which transforms the landscape into a timeless, enduring image, qualities which lay at the very heart of Cézanne’s artistic practice. Constantly striving for the best means to capture the beauty, grandeur and structure of the world around him, Cézanne invented a whole new way of looking and painting nature, opening the door for a generation of subsequent artists.

CHRISTIE’S London, 4 February 2015

PAUL CÉZANNE

Vue sur L’Estaque et Le Château d’If

Christie’s announced the sale of a masterpiece by Paul Cézanne, Vue sur L’Estaque et Le Château d’If, which comes to the market for the first time since it was acquired in 1936 by Samuel Courtauld, the founder of the illustrious Courtauld Gallery and Institute of Art in London (estimate: £8-12 million). The painting remained in Courtauld’s private collection throughout his lifetime and following his generous bequest to the Courtauld Gallery. One of the leading highlights of the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on 4 February 2015, this magisterial work was painted circa 1883-1885, during one of the last visits that Cézanne ever made to L’Estaque, a fishing port and small seaside resort in his native Provence, where he sought inspiration repeatedly from the mid-1860s. This is a rare example on a vertical canvas of Cézanne’s treatment of this iconic motif; the format lends the composition stately dignity and remarkable concentration of colour and form.

The splendid panorama – captured in Vue sur L’Estaque et Le Château d’If - from the hilltop above the town, looking over the rooftops toward the bay of Marseille and the distant islands of Frioul, provided the basis for some of the most innovative landscapes of Cézanne’s career, in which he fully realised his goal to “make of Impressionism something solid and enduring like the art in museums.”

The stable and harmonious distribution of forms within the composition, with broad horizontal bands of land, sea, and sky framed by majestic pine trees, is profoundly indebted to the classical landscape tradition of Poussin, which Cézanne used to organise his sensations before nature. At the same time, Cézanne’s constructive transformation of the townscape into an architectural geometry of flat, overlapping planes is powerfully modern, as the next generation of the avant-garde would recognise. “The discovery of his work overturned everything,” exclaimed Braque, who traveled to L’Estaque repeatedly during the formative years of cubism.

Sotheby’s London Sales of Impressionist and Modern Art on 5 & 6 February 2014

A group of post-impressionist works is spearheaded by three dazzling watercolours by Cézanne - a medium that the artist considered as a unique means of expression in its own right and which allowed him to combine drawing and painting. Executed in 1902-1904,

Femme Assise (Madame Cézanne) is one of Cézanne’s late masterpieces in the medium. Its timeless beauty appealed to a series of prominent collectors before Jan Krugier, including Ambroise Vollard, Paul Rosenbergand Robert von Hirsch (LOT SOLD. 3,554,500 GBP).

Sotheby's 2014

Paul Cézanne

BAIGNEURS

LOT SOLD. 3,666,500 GBP

Paul Cézanne

LE VERGER

LOT SOLD. 338,500 GBP

Sotheby's 2013

Paul Cézanne

LES POMMES

LOT SOLD. 41,605,000 USD

Les Pommes, painted by Cézanne in 1889-90, reveals why his work in the still-life genre is considered among his greatest achievements (est. $25/35 million). These moving compositions, which explore the paradoxes of forms in space, inspired the Cubism of Picasso and Braque and signal the very birth of modern art.

“Les Pommes is one of Cezanne’s most perfect still lifes” commented Charles Moffett, Vice Chairman ofSotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art department. “One could never imagine altering a single brushstroke or touch of color. The painting was a highlight of any visit to the Lewyts’ home, which was filled with works they dearly loved – from small pictures the size of playing cards to important drawings, watercolors and sculpture."