Paul Cezanne, 'The Painter's Father, Louis-Auguste Cezanne', about 1865
About the work
Overview
An older man sits, legs crossed and head bowed, absorbed in his reading. This is Cezanne’s father, Louis-Auguste. He was probably in his early sixties when his son painted this portrait directly onto an alcove wall in the salon of Jas de Bouffan, the country residence outside Aix-en-Provence that Louis-Auguste had bought in 1859.
A photograph said to have been taken in 1905 shows the portrait still in place, flanked by four paintings of the seasons (Petit Palais, Paris).
Key facts
Details
- Full title
- The Painter's Father, Louis-Auguste Cezanne
- Artist
- Paul Cezanne
- Artist dates
- 1839 - 1906
- Date made
- about 1865
- Medium and support
- oil on painted plaster, later mounted on canvas
- Dimensions
- 167.6 × 114.3 cm
- Acquisition credit
- Bought, 1968
- Inventory number
- NG6385
- Location
- Not on display
- Collection
- Main Collection
Provenance
After Louis‐Auguste Cezanne’s death, in 1886, his widow continued to live at the Jas de Bouffan. She died in 1897. The house was later (1899) bought by Louis Granel. In 1907, soon after Cezanne’s death (22 October, 1906) Granel offered the Jas de Bouffan decorations to the French government, which refused them. They were detached from the wall soon afterwards and sold to the Paris dealer, Hessel. No. 6385 was later acquired by the American collector, John Quinn, by whom lent to the Cezanne exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1920 (No. 1). After Quinn’s death, in 1925, No. 6385 was included in the second of two exhibitions of paintings and sculpture from his collection shown in New York in 1926. Purchased by Raymond Pitcairn, Bryn Athyn, Pa. No. 31 in the Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn sale, Parke‐Bernet, New York, 26 October, 1967 (purchaser defaulted). Purchased from the Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, 1968 (Colnaghi Fund and Grant‐in‐Aid).
Additional information
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Martin Davies, with additions and some revisions by Cecil Gould, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: French School: Early 19th Century, Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, etc.’, London 1970; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
Exhibition history
-
2021Impressionist Decorations: The birth of modern décorMusée de l'Orangerie1 March 2022 - 11 July 2022
Bibliography
-
1935G. Mack, Paul Cézanne, New York 1935
-
1936G. Rivière, Cézanne: Le peintre solitaire, Paris 1936
-
1936L. Venturi, Cézanne: Son art, son oeuvre, Paris 1936
-
1938R.J. Goldwater, 'Cézanne in America', Art News, 1938
-
1955D. Cooper, 'Au Jas de Bouffan', L'Oeil, 1955, pp. 13-6, 46
-
1967Parke-Bernet Galleries, Catalogue of Sale at the Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 26 October 1967
-
1969The National Gallery, The National Gallery: January 1967 - December 1968, London 1969
-
1970Davies, Martin, and Cecil Gould, National Gallery Catalogues: French School: Early 19th Century, Impressionists, Post-Impressionists etc., London 1970
-
1971J. Rewald, 'Cézanne and His Father', Studies in the History of Art, IV, 1971, pp. 38-62
-
1978J. Zilczer, The Noble Buyer: John Quinn, Patron of the Avant-Garde, Washington 1978
-
1985J. Rewald, 'Cézanne and his Father', in J. Rewald, Studies in Impressionism, London 1985, pp. 69ff
-
1988S. Geist, Interpreting Cézanne, Cambridge MA 1988
-
1988L. Gowing, Cézanne: The Early Years 1859-1872 (exh. cat. Royal Academy of Arts, 22 April - 21 August 1988), London 1988
-
1994G. Tinterow and H. Loyrette, Origins of Impressionism, (exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994), New York 1994
-
2001
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
-
2006A. Dumas and N. Ireson, Cézanne in Britain, (exh. cat. The National Gallery, 4 October 2006 - 7 January 2007), London 2006
About this record
If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.
Images
More works by Paul Cezanne
(Showing 6 of 13 works)
A old women, her gaze unfocused, clutches a rosary – a string of beads used in prayer – tightly in her hands. According to the writer Joachim Gasquet, the sitter was a former nun who had escaped from a convent, wandering aimlessly until Cezanne took her on as a servant.Gasquet found this painting...
Cezanne spent several months over the summer of 1888 working in and around Chantilly, some 24 miles north of Paris. This is one of three similar oil paintings of the park surrounding the chateau that he produced during his stay. The symmetry and spatial depth of this view may have appealed to him...
Around 200 of Cezanne’s works depict male and female nude bathers, either singly or in groups, in a landscape. This large painting is one of three pictures of female bathers that Cezanne worked on during the final decade of his life. They represent the culmination of his lifelong investigation of...
In the early 1890s, Cezanne repeatedly painted the same set of objects in the isolation of his studio – fruit, dishes, cloths, and a water jug – to render them from different perspectives and interrogate their formal properties. In this picture, Cezanne introduces subtle effects of distortion to...
The wall of angular, jutting rock formations in this painting may represent a quarry, with the cuttings revealing geological strata. While the hillside is somewhere in Cezanne’s native Provence, the specific location has not been conclusively identified.Stylistically, the painting relates to scen...
In the 1890s and early 1900s, Cezanne painted numerous views of the Bibémus Quarry. Situated not far from Aix-en-Provence, the site was renowned since Antiquity for its yellow-ochre limestone. But while the artist was mesmerised by the quarry’s chromatic qualities, he also had personal and intell...
This painting is of a summer landscape in Cezanne’s native Provence in the south of France. Like the Impressionists, Cezanne was interested in depicting the landscape primarily using touches of colour. Although this painting shows Cezanne’s debt to Impressionism, his method is more controlled. Fo...
Paul Cezanne was about 40 years old when he painted this self portrait in Paris around 1880–1. He was now middle-aged with a family to support, and the intensity of his earlier self portraits has here given way to a more distant and reflective presence. Although relatively small, the portrait has...
The Château Noir was a rambling house situated in extensive grounds near Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. Surrounded by wild vegetation, the run-down, isolated chateau offered Cezanne many subjects, and it became one of his favourite locations. He rented a small room in the house from 1897...
During the 1860s Cezanne divided his time between his family home in Aix-en-Provence and Paris, where this picture was probably painted. It evokes the privation of his Bohemian existence in the capital. Cezanne has rearranged the objects in his studio, and we see them from a high viewpoint, as th...
You've viewed 6 of 13 works