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Lot Essay
The formal qualities of sculpture from antiquity and the European Baroque strongly influenced Cézanne's conception of the figure. The artist frequently sketched from sculptures in the Louvre. The present drawing is one from several series of studies, taking various viewpoints, done after Hercules au repos by Pierre Puget (1620-1694). The earliest of these sketches dates from the early 1870s (Chappuis, no. 575), and others were done in the late 1870s to the mid-1880s (Chappuis, nos. 576-578, 999-1000). The present drawing belongs to a sequence done in the late 1880s and early 1890s (Chappuis, nos. 1002-1006). A final group dates from the later 1890s (Chappuis, nos. 1057-1060, 1196 and 1208A).
Joachim Gasquet, a close associate of the artist during the 1890s, included a section about Puget in his book Cézanne, written in 1912-1913, and published posthumously in 1921. While Gasquet is understood to have interpolated his own ideas into his accounts of authentic pronouncements by Cézanne, this passage clearly underscores the artist's admiration for Puget, who was also a native of Provence. Gasquet reports Cézanne as saying, "If you want to talk about a Provençal, let's talk about Puget...Puget has the mistral in him; he brings marbles to life...Before him sculpture was balanced, an entire block of crystallized light. He gave it color and shading. He used ambient shadow the way his contemporaries used shadows from below...Classicism was still alive in him" (quoted in M. Doran, ed., Conversations with Cezanne, Berkeley, 2001, pp. 149-150).
Joachim Gasquet, a close associate of the artist during the 1890s, included a section about Puget in his book Cézanne, written in 1912-1913, and published posthumously in 1921. While Gasquet is understood to have interpolated his own ideas into his accounts of authentic pronouncements by Cézanne, this passage clearly underscores the artist's admiration for Puget, who was also a native of Provence. Gasquet reports Cézanne as saying, "If you want to talk about a Provençal, let's talk about Puget...Puget has the mistral in him; he brings marbles to life...Before him sculpture was balanced, an entire block of crystallized light. He gave it color and shading. He used ambient shadow the way his contemporaries used shadows from below...Classicism was still alive in him" (quoted in M. Doran, ed., Conversations with Cezanne, Berkeley, 2001, pp. 149-150).