.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The recto of this sheet was page X from the sketchbook CP II.
Around 1878, the relationship between Zola and Cézanne, which had cooled over preceding years, was revived. The correspondence between the two men began to resume the frequency it had enjoyed in earlier days and Cézanne became a regular visitor to Zola's house at Médan on the Seine. Admittedly, much of the correspondence took the form of begging letters, as the increasingly fraught Cézanne, without any substantial means of support, sought to manage the demands of his clandestine family whilst avoiding the consternation of his disapproving father. Zola, as reliable a sponsor to his boyhood friend as he was to Monet at the same time, duly sent monthly payments to the hidden Hortense.
The present work appears to depict Zola in the late-1870s as he neared his fortieth year. It shows him in all likelihood seated behind one of his favoured carved wooden, high desks - the sort of desk that Cézanne said made a visitor to Zola's office feel like a supplicant before a 'minister of state'. Cézanne has rendered the forceful features of his friend with a combination of appropriately vigorous outline and softer hatching in the face. The abbreviated handling and nimbly suggested volume of the sitter's torso and arm, together with rhythmic curlicues describing his ears, both point to later developments in Cézanne's draughtsmanship. Interestingly, the repeated lines mapping the junction between Zola's shoulders and the back of his neck indicate a hesistancy that was to persist in Cézanne's art when dealing with this part of the anatomy.
Around 1878, the relationship between Zola and Cézanne, which had cooled over preceding years, was revived. The correspondence between the two men began to resume the frequency it had enjoyed in earlier days and Cézanne became a regular visitor to Zola's house at Médan on the Seine. Admittedly, much of the correspondence took the form of begging letters, as the increasingly fraught Cézanne, without any substantial means of support, sought to manage the demands of his clandestine family whilst avoiding the consternation of his disapproving father. Zola, as reliable a sponsor to his boyhood friend as he was to Monet at the same time, duly sent monthly payments to the hidden Hortense.
The present work appears to depict Zola in the late-1870s as he neared his fortieth year. It shows him in all likelihood seated behind one of his favoured carved wooden, high desks - the sort of desk that Cézanne said made a visitor to Zola's office feel like a supplicant before a 'minister of state'. Cézanne has rendered the forceful features of his friend with a combination of appropriately vigorous outline and softer hatching in the face. The abbreviated handling and nimbly suggested volume of the sitter's torso and arm, together with rhythmic curlicues describing his ears, both point to later developments in Cézanne's draughtsmanship. Interestingly, the repeated lines mapping the junction between Zola's shoulders and the back of his neck indicate a hesistancy that was to persist in Cézanne's art when dealing with this part of the anatomy.