Brouillon de lettre et Etudes des baigneurs (recto); Etudes: Pêcheur et Scène avec personnages (verso)

Details

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
Brouillon de lettre et Etudes des baigneurs (recto); Etudes: Pêcheur et Scène avec personnages (verso)
ink and pencil on grey paper (recto); pencil on grey paper (verso)
12 3/8 x 7¾in. (31.5 x 19.9cm.)
Drawn circa 1874-1877 (Baigneurs, recto) and written circa 1878 (Brouillon de lettre); drawn circa 1868-1871 verso

Provenance

Paul Cézanne fils, Paris.
Acquired from the above by Paul Guillaume, Paris.
Acquired from the above by Adrien Chappuis, Tresserve.
By descent from the above to the present owner.

Literature

A. Vollard, Paul Cézanne, Paris, 1914, pp. 42-43 (recto illustrated).
L. Venturi, Cézanne, son art-son oeuvre, Paris, 1936, no. 1231, p. 298 (recto); no. 1232, p. 299 (verso) (illustrated vol. II, pl. 342).
J. Rewald (ed.), Cézanne, Correspondance, Paris, 1937, letter no. LVII (recto, illustrated p. 24).
J. Rewald, Paul Cézanne Letters, London, 1941, pp. 131-132.
T. Reff, 'Cézanne's Bather with Outstretched Arms', in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, March 1962, p. 177 (recto).
G. Jedlicka, Cézanne Briefe, Zurich, 1962, no. LVII (recto). A. Chappuis, The Drawings of Paul Cézanne, A Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1973, vol. I, no. 378, p. 128 (recto); no. 239, p. 102 (verso) (illustrated vol. II, nos. 378 and 239).

Special notice

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Lot Essay

The recto is the rough draft of a letter addressed to the writer Marius Roux (1838-1905), a boyhood friend of Emil Zola. He wrote La proie et l'ombre, to which Cézanne refers to as L'ombre et la proie.

Rewald (op. cit., 1941) translated the letter: 'My dear Compatriot, Although our friendly relations have been allowed to relax in the sense that I have not often sought your hospitability, I yet do not hesitate to turn to you today. - I hope that you will distinguish between my humble personality as an impressionist painter and myself as a person, and that you will only remember the companion. Therefore, it is not to the author of "L'Ombre et la Proie" that I appeal to but to the compatriot who saw the light of day beneath the same sun as I did, and I am taking the liberty of sending my eminent friend and musician Cabaner to you. I beg you to be kind to him and also recommend myself to you for the day when the Salon will dawn for me.
In the hope that my request will be favourably received I send you my thanks and cordial regards. A handclasp.
P. Cézanne
Pictor semper virens
although not [illegible word]'

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