D'après l'antique: Vénus de Milo (recto); Etudes de nuages (verso)

Details

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
D'après l'antique: Vénus de Milo (recto); Etudes de nuages (verso)
pencil on paper (recto and verso)
8½ x 4¾ in. (21.5 x 12.2 cm.)
Drawn circa 1872-1873 (recto); drawn circa 1884-1887 (verso)

Provenance

Paul Cézanne fils, Paris.
Acquired from the above by Paul Guillaume, Paris.
Acquired from the estate of the above by Adrien Chappuis, Tresserve, in 1934, and thence by descent to the Barut family, Chembéry; sale, Christie's London, 26 June 2003, lot 330.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owners.

Literature

K. Pfister, Cézanne, Potsdam, 1927, p. 31 (recto illustrated).
L. Venturi, Cézanne, son art-son eouvre, vol. I, Paris, 1936, p. 308, no. 1296 (recto and verso) (recto illustrated vol. II pl. 352).
G. Berthold, Cézanne und die alten Meister, Stuttgart, 1958, no. 12 (recto illustrated).
A. Chappuis, The Drawings of Paul Cézanne, A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, London, 1973, no. 308, p. 114 (recto); no. 888, p. 215 (verso) (illustrated vol. II nos. 308 and 888).

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

The recto study of the Vénus de Milo is a recurrent theme in Cézanne's output on paper. It was probably done from a plaster cast, rather than from the original marble in the Louvre, as Chappuis (op. cit.) suggested. In the present rendering of the Venus, Cézanne put greater emphasis on the modelling of the lower abdomen, than in other sketches in the same carnet (see lot 557).

Chappuis (op. cit.) noted that the cloud studies on the verso are a rare subject for the artist. The vaporous nature of this subject might seem to be at odds with Cézanne's normally solid approach to the modelling of objects; clouds nonetheless feature prominently in some of the landscapes and many of the bather paintings.

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