Paysage fantastique (recto); Etude d'une femme et d'un faune (verso)

Details

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
Paysage fantastique (recto); Etude d'une femme et d'un faune (verso)
pencil on paper (recto and verso)
3 3/8 x 5¾in. (8.5 x 14.4cm.)
Drawn circa 1873 (recto); drawn circa 1869-1873 (verso)

Provenance

Paul Cézanne fils, Paris.
W. Feuz, Bern.
W. Raeber, Basel.
Adrien Chappuis, Tresserve.
By descent from the above to the present owner.

Literature

G. Rivière, Le maître Paul Cézanne, Paris, 1923, p. 167 (recto illustrated).
L. Venturi, Cézanne, son art-son oeuvre, Paris, 1936, no. 1230, p. 298 (recto illustrated vol. II, p. 342).
A. Chappuis, Dessins de Cézanne, Lausanne, 1957, no. 20-21 (recto illustrated).
A. Chappuis, The Drawings of Paul Cézanne, A Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1973, vol. I, no. 321, p. 117 (recto); no. 322, p. 117 (verso) (illustrated vol. II, nos. 321 and 322).
J. Rewald, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne. A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1996, vol. I, p. 169.

Exhibited

Paris, Musée de l'Orangerie, Cézanne, May-October 1936, no. 143.
Lyons, Musée de Lyon, Centenaire de Paul Cézanne, 1939, no. 59. London, Wildenstein Galleries, Homage to Paul Cézanne, July 1939, no. 76.
Paris, Grand Palais, Centenaire du peintre indépendant Paul Cézanne, March-April 1939, no. 76.
Tübingen, Kunsthalle, Paul Cézanne. Das zeichnerische Werk, Oct.-Dec. 1978, no. 129 (recto illustrated p. 225).

Special notice

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Lot Essay

This drawing is a compositional study for the oil painting Les pêcheurs (Scène fantastique), circa 1875 (R 237; a recent acquisition of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2001), which is known under both of these titles. The most frequently used, Scène fantastique (accepted by Chappuis, op. cit., 1973), seems to Rewald the least appropriate (op. cit.). Rewald accepts the title of the 1877 Third Impressionist Exhibition, where the oil was shown as Les Pêcheurs.

There is an interesting difference between the oil and the painting: the top-hatted man in the lower left corner of the composition - the painter's alter ego - is working at his easel in this sketch. This reference to en plein air painting is lost in the oil, where the figure is simply walking with his stick.

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