This remarkable and rare oil-study of trees was made by C\u00e9zanne during his last years in the countryside of Aix-en-Provence, a few kilometres from the Montagne Sainte-Victoire. He was then living in seclusion from the art world, painting and living out his days in the familiarity of his area. Among all the topics approached by the master during his career, tress and forest were the most beloved ones, especially at the end of his life. C\u00e9zanne would often create composition entirely without pencil sketches to plan out the canvas beforehand, but just with brush and sketch with paint directly on the surface. He could concentrate power and emotion into a bare minimum of brushstrokes. This rhythm and vibrant energy are evident in the rapid, textured strokes of the present landscape.<\/p>\n
The composition is centred on a tree, designed with grey and brownish lines and contrasted by brushes of different tones of green, around the trunk and the branches. The outline of a second tree is visible on the background of the painting. The ground is simply represented using two different ochres, evoking the red sandstone of the region. With its large stretches of unpainted canvas and its almost sketch-like brushstrokes, it resembles the simplified qualities of C\u00e9zanne\u2019s singular watercolor landscapes.<\/p>\n
In 1950-1951, Lionello Venturi poetically described this powerful representation as follows: \u201cA chestnut-tree, a trunk, branches, spots on the foliage, a ground, everything almost without color, and the rest is uncovered canvas. However, this tree is alive, with his energy, his aspirations, his deserved pride. It\u2019s a model of human imagination. \u201d. Venturi titled the painting \u201cUn ippocastano\u201d (A Chestnut-tree) and dated it around 1890, maybe in reference to Cezanne\u2019s family country-house, the Jas de Bouffan. C\u00e9zanne painted many chestnut-trees surrounding this farm at this time, such as Aisle of Tree in Jas de Bouffan (1888, Barnes Foundation), until he sold the place in 1899, after his mother\u2019s death in 1897. But John Rewald gave it a later date, around 1900, at a time when C\u00e9zanne was painting landscapes in different places in Aix-de-Provence\u2019s countryside, around Ch\u00e2teau Noir, Le Tholonet and Bib\u00e9mus. The artist alternatively used a room in Ch\u00e2teau Noir and a cabanon in Bib\u00e9mus\u2019 quarry before the construction of his Lauves studio, in 1902, from which he continued painting nature but could also work on larger productions.<\/p>\n
Originally this painting was known to be part of Ambroise Vollard\u2019s collection. As dealer and collector, Vollard had originally discovered Cezanne\u2019s paintings through Pissarro\u2019s and Caillebotte\u2019s collections, before organizing an exhibition of his work in his gallery in 1895 and becoming then C\u00e9zanne\u2019s exclusive dealer. Appraised by the collector Vollard, the present work however remained in his collection all his life. At his death in 1939, it went to his brother Lucien, who immediately got the works under his charge safely out of Paris. After the War, the present work was exhibited in 1950-51 at Ottawa in a major show entitled Paintings from the Vollard Collection. At his death in February 1952, Lucien had designated Edouard Jonas as his sole heir. A former councilman and inaugural director of the Mus\u00e9e Cognac-Jay (1929) in Paris who then became an art dealer before getting into the oil business in the USA, Jonas had been very close to the Vollard family since the early 30\u2019s. His collection was extremely well selected. As far as we can assert, there were seven C\u00e9zanne works in the Jonas collection. He died in 1961 and the collection passed to his widow Assunta Bertzozzi, who lived between Ellinwood (Kansas), New York and Paris. By 1968, she sold the work to Jacques Ullmann, Paris, who owned one of the best collections in France in the 50-60\u2019s, with works by the main Pont-Aven, Symbolist and Surrealist artists, and works by Picasso, Giacometti, Brancusi, Miro, etc. It has remained in the family until now.<\/p>\n
The present work has received the export passport from the French government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This remarkable and rare oil-study of trees was made by C\u00e9zanne during his last years in the countryside of Aix-en-Provence, a few kilometres from the Montagne Sainte-Victoire. He was then living in seclusion from the art world, painting and living out his days in the familiarity of his area. Among all the topics approached by … Continue reading “Paul C\u00e9zanne”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillisgoldman.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830\/"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillisgoldman.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillisgoldman.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post\/"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillisgoldman.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2\/"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillisgoldman.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments\/?post=1830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gillisgoldman.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830\/revisions\/"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1832,"href":"https:\/\/gillisgoldman.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830\/revisions\/1832\/"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillisgoldman.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1866\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillisgoldman.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/?parent=1830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillisgoldman.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/?post=1830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillisgoldman.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/?post=1830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}