Walk a sandy track through the garrigue, and look across the scrub towards a battered old stone mas with its shallow red-tiled roofs. Raise your eyes, and look beyond the limestone crags that repeat the blocky forms of the buildings, to the violet mountain ridges in the distance. You are walking through a characteristic Provençal landscape as painted by Cézanne.
When you taste the dust and sniff the resin and the herbs as you stroll; when you squint against the light, you are experiencing the landscape as Cézanne did, and you will be better able to respond to his work. Several of the great impressionist and post impressionist artists lived and painted in Provence, but for me, none of their work embodies the sense and spirit of the place in quite the way that Cezanne’s paintings do. His vision of the landscape as being made up of geometric, repetitive forms was to lead eventually into the development of cubism by later artists, and Picasso was to say: ‘He was the father of us all.’
At the age of forty-seven, when he returned to Aix after many years living in Paris, he immersed himself in representing again and again two quite dissimilar but characteristically Provençal landscapes — the coast at L’Estaque, and the scruffy hills near Gardanne.
Sadly, there is little opportunity to see any of Cezanne’s paintings in Provence, but there is, nevertheless, one unforgettable experience waiting for you — a visit to his studio at Chemin Les Lauves, once in the countryside, but now amongst the suburbs of Aix en Provence.
After a tangled drive around the beautiful streets of Aix, we were quite intimidated, at first, by the difficulty of parking anywhere near the building, but we eventually found a spot adjacent to a block of scruffy Council apartments, not far from a burnt-out car, and beneath balconies hung with brightly coloured washing.
From the outside, Cézanne’s studio appeared to be a rather grim old house, but once inside, we were swept away by the atmosphere. Up the stairs, past the postcard and book counter, we entered the softly lighted room with the walls painted neutral colours. Immediately we recognised a room from which Cézanne might just have stepped out. The scrabble of paints and palettes; the angular tripods; the satchels; everything was dusty and ancient, but still haunted by the master’s presence.
In one corner was the repaired slot in the wall through which his gigantic painting, Les Grandes Baigneuses had been passed down to the garden below — it was much too large to fit down the stairs! And the shelves — there were the ginger jars, the skulls, the fruit, the cherubs and figurines — all the familiar icons from Cezanne’s still-lifes, apparently waiting to be used any minute.
Do you have to be mad about painting to enjoy your visit? I don’t think so. Tourist visits are so often disappointing we even have a bad word for them — ‘tourist traps’ — but Cézanne’s studio is far from a theme park due to the obviously fantastically conservative nature of the management of the site. Anyone could spend an hour or two there, then drive out a little further to get a clear view of Mont Sainte-Victoire and feel a greater depth of understanding of Provençal culture and history.
Because, in a way, that’s what it’s all about. Cézanne could have returned to Aix and painted pretty street scenes with cafés and cobblestones, but he was more enthusiastic about the Provençal cultural renaissance pioneered by figures like Fréderic Mistral, and many of his paintings in this period are beautiful social documents, views of farms, quarries, ports, views that seem ageless, and yet incredibly familiar to the modern tourist.
In 1948, as a very young man, the Australian painter of surreal, moody urban landscapes, Jeffrey Smart, made a lengthy visit to the studio. Nothing has changed from his description, then, and he too felt the old man’s presence.
At the end of the day, the elderly woman caretaker spoke to Smart, and said,
“’You love the master, don’t you?’ I said I did, very much, and added that when I went back to Pris, I was going to the bookshop where his son was, hoping for a glimpse of him.
With sudden and unexpected passion she cried,’Oh him! Why would you want to see him? He only thinks of money, money, money! He has no feeling for his father’s work.’ I said that could well be so, but at least he was the flesh and blood of Cézanne, his only child. She looked at me very intensely, and then said slowly and quietly, ‘There is also a daughter.’
Suddenly I saw the hooked nose, the same piercing black eyes, the shape of the forehead, and and I realised I was looking into the face of the master. ‘Oh Madame!’ I said, and she inclined her head slightly, in acknowledgement, and smiled.”
In the overgrown garden at Les Lauves, a chair sits on the deck, a wineglass and a book on the side table. Presumably Cézanne has just gone out for a stroll, perhaps to the nearby quarry he painted so often…
© Steve Craddock 2008
You might enjoy the full chapter about the studio from Jeffrey Smart’s autobiography, Not quite straight, a memoir, published by William Heinemann, from which this anecdote has been quoted. You won’t find the book on Amazon UK, but copies may be purchased in Australia.
The Tourist Information Office in Place Géneral de Gaulle can provide you with a brochure for a “walk in the footsteps of Cézanne”:
http://www.aixenprovencetourism.com/uk/aix-cezanne.htm
Photo Credits
© Alice Barker 2007 and taken with the kind permission of Michel Fraisset, Directeur de l'Atelier Cézanne.
