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Lot Essay
The recto of this sheet was page X from the sketchbook CP IV; the verso page IX.
The conventional subject of the vanitas theme - the image of the human skull - disappeared completely from Cézanne's work for a period of nearly thirty years. The skull's reappearance around 1898 is significant: while we know from the artist's writings that he was obsessed with his own death from as early as 1870, the death of his mother came on 25 October 1897 and tragic event surely brought his own mortality into sharper focus. Between 1898 and 1904 Cézanne incorporated this motif into his painted still-lifes and their numerous studies with great force.
In the present work, as with most of his drawings, Cézanne emphasizes the outlines that define the shape of the skull, allowing the largely untouched whites to blaze forth. 'Lines and modelling do not exist. Drawing is a relationship of contrasts or simply the relationship of two tones, white and black' (P. Cézanne quoted in L. Larguier, Le dimanche avec Paul Cézanne, Paris, 1925, p. 135).
While a stock accessory in artist's studios for centuries, Cézanne worked from three skulls in his studio on the Lauves in Aix-en-Provence, where they are still kept today.
The conventional subject of the vanitas theme - the image of the human skull - disappeared completely from Cézanne's work for a period of nearly thirty years. The skull's reappearance around 1898 is significant: while we know from the artist's writings that he was obsessed with his own death from as early as 1870, the death of his mother came on 25 October 1897 and tragic event surely brought his own mortality into sharper focus. Between 1898 and 1904 Cézanne incorporated this motif into his painted still-lifes and their numerous studies with great force.
In the present work, as with most of his drawings, Cézanne emphasizes the outlines that define the shape of the skull, allowing the largely untouched whites to blaze forth. 'Lines and modelling do not exist. Drawing is a relationship of contrasts or simply the relationship of two tones, white and black' (P. Cézanne quoted in L. Larguier, Le dimanche avec Paul Cézanne, Paris, 1925, p. 135).
While a stock accessory in artist's studios for centuries, Cézanne worked from three skulls in his studio on the Lauves in Aix-en-Provence, where they are still kept today.