Lot 129
  • 129

Paul Cézanne

Estimate
200,000 - 300,000 USD
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Description

  • Paul Cézanne
  • Carafe et bol
  • Watercolor and pencil on paper
  • 6 7/8 by 4 1/2 in.
  • 17.5 by 11.4 cm

Provenance

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Cagnes
Alfred Daber, Paris
Georges Renand, Paris (acquired from the above circa 1932)
Galerie Bellier, Sociéte d'Expansion Artistique, Paris
Acquired from the above on May 18, 1960

Exhibited

Paris, Galerie Baugin, Aquarelles de Cézanne, 1839-1906, 1950, no. 2
Aix-en-Provence, Galerie Lucien Blanc, Exposition d'aquarelles de Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), 1953, no. 6, illustrated in the catalogue
Paris, Galerie Bellier, D'Ingres à nos jours, 1960, no. 8
New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Cézanne Watercolors, 1963, no. 7, illustrated on the cover of the catalogue and in the catalogue pl. V
Pasadena, Pasadena Art Museum, Cézanne Watercolors, 1967, no. 4, illustrated in the catalogue
Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Cézanne in the Studio: Still Life in Watercolors, 2004-05, illustrated in color in the catalogue pl. 12

Literature

Lionello Venturi, Cézanne, son art, son oeuvre, vol. I, Paris, 1936, p. 350
Arts et Livres de Provence, no. 24, 1954, illustrated
T. Horton, "Cézanne the Water-colourist: An Exhibition in New York," in Apollo, April 1963, illustrated p. 337
Theodore Reff, "Cézanne: The Logical Mystery," in Art News, April 1963, illustrated p. 31
John Rewald, Paul Cezanne, The Watercolors, A Catalogue Raisonné, Boston, 1983, no. 107, illustrated p. 110 
John Rewald, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne, A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, New York, 1996, no. 107, illustrated n.p.

Condition

Executed on cream wove paper. This work is hinged to a mat at the upper corners of its verso. There is some slight uneven discoloration in the bottom (unpainted) area of the recto. A weak hint of a mat stain runs along the edges. The pigment is strong and unabraded. Overall, this work is in very good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

Carafe et bol is an outstanding example of Cézanne’s still-life compositions, demonstrating the audacity of style and assured quality of technique that characterized the artist in his prime. Indeed throughout the 1870s and 1880s, Cézanne’s pictorial language became increasingly sophisticated. In each new composition he viewed the objects at his disposal with a fresh eye, arranging them in unexpected ways, changing proportions and establishing new formal and spatial relationships. He achieved dynamism by juxtaposing objects of different shapes and sizes, meanwhile contrasting in his rendering the emphatic linearity of their contour forms with looser, lively brushwork, intimating both light and space.

Cézanne’s still lifes have long been recognized among his greatest achievements, the images which demonstrate most clearly the innovations that led to the stylistic developments of early twentieth-century art. Both art historians and artists have argued that Cézanne reached the very pinnacle of his genius within the discipline of the still-life, as this genre—and inherently not portrait or plein-air painting—allowed him the greatest amount of time to capture his subject.

Discussing Cézanne’s output of this genre, Roger Fry noted that Cézanne "is distinguished among artists of the highest rank by the act that he devoted so large a part of his time to this class of picture, that he achieved in still-life the expression of the most exalted feelings and the deepest intuitions of his nature. Rembrandt alone, and that only in the rarest examples, or in accessories, can be compared to him in this respect. For one cannot deny that Cézanne gave a new character to his still-lifes. Nothing else but still-life allowed him sufficient calm and leisure, and admitted all the delays which were necessary to him for plumbing the depths of his idea. But there, before the still-life, put together not with too ephemeral flowers, but with onions, apples, or other robust and long-enduring fruits, he could pursue till it was exhausted his probing analysis of the chromatic whole. But through the bewildering labyrinth of this analysis he held always like Ariadne’s thread, the notion that changes of color correspond to movements of planes. He sought always to trace this correspondence throughout all the diverse modifications which changes of local color introduced into the observed resultant...it is hard to exaggerate their importance in the expression of Cézanne’s genius or the necessity of studying them for its comprehension, because it is in them that he appears to have established his principles of design and his theories of form" (Roger Fry, Cézanne: A Study of His Development, Chicago, 1927, pp. 37 & 50).

Interestingly, Carafe et bol was once in the personal collection of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and it was later published on the cover of the catalogue for the pivotal exhibition Cézanne’s Watercolors at M. Knoedler & Co. in 1960. This important show was organized by the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, with Cézanne authority John Rewald on the selection committee, and the catalogue featured articles by famed modern scholars Meyer Schapiro and Theodore Reff. In it, Bernice J. Kramer writes of this work, “The objects in this watercolor appear frequently in the still lifes Cézanne painted between 1879 and 1882. The specific combination of carafe, bowl, and wallpaper can be seen in two oils (Venturi, nos. 337 and 340), which are datable because the wallpaper is believed to have decorated the house in Melun where Cézanne lived in 1879-80 or the apartment in Paris where he lived in 1881-82. In this simple relief-like composition, Cézanne skillfully juxtaposes the strong horizontals of the table surface with the verticals of the carafe neck, table legs, and background, contrasting this rectilinear framework with the subtly curved carafe and bowl” (Cézanne’s Watercolors (exhibition catalogue), M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1963, p. 25).