PAUL CÉZANNE | D'après Delacroix: La Barque de Dante

Joachim Gasquet, Aix-en-Provence
Xavier de Magallon, Aix-en-Provence
Alfred Gold, Paris
Eugène Blot, Paris (and sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 23, 1937, lot 52)
Storran Gallery, London
Lord & Lady Clark, Saltwood Castle, Kent (acquired by February 1939) 
Private Collection, England
Adrian Ward-Jackson, Ltd., London (acquired on May 1, 1987)
E.V. Thaw, New York 
Acquired from the above by 1988 

Paris, Galerie Pigalle, Exposition Cézanne, 1839-1906, Quelques souvenirs, 1930, n.n. 
London, Storran Gallery, Paraphrases, 1939, no. 51 
Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy & London, Tate Gallery, Paintings by Cézanne, 1954, no. 1 (dated 1864)
London, Tate Gallery, The Romantic Movement, 1959, no. 52 (dated 1870-73)
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Paris, Musée d'Orsay & Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, Cézanne, The Early Years, 1859-1872, 1988-89, no. 5, illustrated in the catalogue
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Prized Possessions, 1992, no. 22, illustrated in the catalogue
Paris, Musée du Louvre, Paris, Copier Créer: de Turner à Picasso, 300 oeuvres inspirées par les les maîtres du Louvre, 1993, no. 169, illustrated in the catalogue

Joachim Gasquet, Cézanne, Paris, 1921, illustrated pl. 96 (titled La Barque de Dante) 
Julius Meier-Graefe, Cézanne und sein Kreis, Munich, 1922, illustrated p. 93 (dated circa 1868 and titled Copie nach der Dantebarke)
Joachim Gasquet, Cézanne, Paris, 1926, illustrated pl. 29 (titled La Barque de Dante) 
Nina Iavorskaia, Cézanne, Moscow, 1935, illustrated pl. 5
Lionello Venturi, Cézanne, son art—son oeuvre, vol. II, Paris, 1936, no. 125, illustrated n.p.
Sara Lichtenstein, "Cézanne's Copies and Variants after Delacroix," in Apollo, vol. CI, London, 1975, no. 156, illustrated n.p.
Pascal Bonafoux, Cézanne: portrait, Paris, 1995, illustrated p. 207
John Rewald, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, London, 1996, no. 172, mentioned p. 138; vol. II, no. 172, illustrated p. 59
Walter Feilchenfeldt, Jayne Warman & David Nash, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: An Online Catalogue Raisonné, no. 615, https://www.cezannecatalogue.com/catalogue/entry.php?id=179 (accessed on September 21, 2019)
Cézanne Metamorphoses (exhibition catalogue), Karlsruhe, Kunsthalle Karlsruhe & traveling, 2017, illustrated n.p. 

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Delacroix’s La Barque de Dante (1822) is now in the collection of the Louvre, a museum which Cézanne described in a 1905 letter as the book from "which we learn to read." Based loosely on Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, the original painting by Delacroix broke conventions and marked an important shift away from the Neo-Classical tradition toward the burgeoning Romantic movement. Cézanne saw in Delacroix a vital link between the art of his contemporaries and that of the Old Masters. He owned a number of engravings of Delacroix’s work, but it was the strong color and dramatic tones which most appealed: “His remains the finest palette in France and nobody in our country has possessed at once such calm and pathos, such shimmering color. We all paint in him” (Cézanne quoted in Joachim Gasquet, Cézanne, A Memoir with Conversations (1897-1906), London, 1991, p. 197). John Rewald’s catalogue raisonné lists over 20 oil painting copies by Cézanne in styles which range from Neoclassicism, Rococo, Baroque, Mannerist and Impressionist, and particularly evident is his high regard for the colorists—Titian, Rembrandt and Delacroix—with works by Delacroix featuring most frequently. Cézanne’s lifelong admiration was shared by one of his own patrons, Victor Chocquet, who was also a passionate collector of Delacroix. In 1895 Cézanne accepted a watercolor by Delacroix (which he promptly copied) in exchange for one of his own works from an exhibition.

The figures in the lower register of the present work show Cézanne’s methods most clearly: the large square brushstrokes which model the arms for example, and the use of planes grouped together to create a sense of mass all point toward the distinctive style he would go on to develop. The first owner of the painting, Joachim Gasquet, was a poet, critic and friend whose 1921 book Cézanne is among the earliest appreciations of the artist's life and work. The subsequent owner, Xavier de Magallon was another poet, known for his classical translations into French.

Édouard Manet’s copies of The Barque of Dante made in the 1850s and 1860s are in the collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (see fig. 1).