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拍品專文
Executed on both sides of the same sheet, Vue d’un bourg (Emagny) (recto) and Verdure (verso) showcase the refined delicacy of Paul Cezanne’s watercolour technique, combining fine drawings in pencil with rich, multi-hued washes of diaphanous colour.
Watercolour remained central to Cezanne’s practice throughout his career, offering him a variety of dynamic painterly effects through which to explore his unique vision. 'His method was remarkable,' the artist Emile Bernard wrote in 1904, describing Cezanne’s masterful use of the medium, 'absolutely different from the usual process, and extremely complicated. He began on the shadow with a single patch, which he then overlapped with a second, then a third, until all those tints, hinging one to another like screens, not only coloured the object but modelled its form' (quoted in: J. Rewald, Paul Cezanne: The Watercolours - A Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1983, p. 37).
In both of these evocative works, Cezanne deploys precise touches of semi-translucent pigment - from sage green to petrol blue, mauve to ochre - to capture the quiet beauty of the landscape with an astounding simplicity and economy of means. As John Rewald has noted, there are strong similarities in the array of buildings seen in Vue d’un bourg (Emagny) and another watercolour of the same period, Bourg avec église (Emagny) (FWN no. 1257; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett), suggesting this is a variation on the same view, seen from further away and at a higher vantage point.
Looking through a gap in the curving trees, we catch a glimpse of the rounded cupola of a church tower, indicated in soft strokes of pencil. This is most likely the church in Pin, a small village not far from Emagny, where Cezanne was living in 1890 with his wife Hortense and their son Paul. On the reverse of the sheet, Verdure contains no visible markers of a specific location; rather it depicts a dense copse of trees and foliage, with a variety of plants and bushes layered atop one another and packed tightly together - a celebration of the natural fecundity of the French countryside that so captivated Cezanne.
Watercolour remained central to Cezanne’s practice throughout his career, offering him a variety of dynamic painterly effects through which to explore his unique vision. 'His method was remarkable,' the artist Emile Bernard wrote in 1904, describing Cezanne’s masterful use of the medium, 'absolutely different from the usual process, and extremely complicated. He began on the shadow with a single patch, which he then overlapped with a second, then a third, until all those tints, hinging one to another like screens, not only coloured the object but modelled its form' (quoted in: J. Rewald, Paul Cezanne: The Watercolours - A Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1983, p. 37).
In both of these evocative works, Cezanne deploys precise touches of semi-translucent pigment - from sage green to petrol blue, mauve to ochre - to capture the quiet beauty of the landscape with an astounding simplicity and economy of means. As John Rewald has noted, there are strong similarities in the array of buildings seen in Vue d’un bourg (Emagny) and another watercolour of the same period, Bourg avec église (Emagny) (FWN no. 1257; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett), suggesting this is a variation on the same view, seen from further away and at a higher vantage point.
Looking through a gap in the curving trees, we catch a glimpse of the rounded cupola of a church tower, indicated in soft strokes of pencil. This is most likely the church in Pin, a small village not far from Emagny, where Cezanne was living in 1890 with his wife Hortense and their son Paul. On the reverse of the sheet, Verdure contains no visible markers of a specific location; rather it depicts a dense copse of trees and foliage, with a variety of plants and bushes layered atop one another and packed tightly together - a celebration of the natural fecundity of the French countryside that so captivated Cezanne.