The Paintings of Paul Cezanne: A Catalogue Raisonne - Review

Rewald made a specialty of tracing the activities and strategies of dealers and collectors; he believed their record not only would affect questions of authenticity, but also would define essential features of the social history of modern art. Embedded in his catalogue's entries are detailed studies of individual dealers, curators, critics, and collectors (in this last category, the likes of Victor Chocquet, Auguste Pellerin, Charles Loeser, and John Quinn). These hidden treasures are products of Rewald's research over many years, and most of them can be found among his earlier publications; they are not so easily retrieved from the new catalogue because the logic of their placement is unpredictable. The index helps a bit, but not enough, because its headings usually lack subheadings despite multiple references. It turns out, for instance, that the vast cache of information on Pellerin and his collection lies under the entry for an unassuming landscape Cezanne painted on Chocquet's property in 1882. The connection is less than obvious: Pellerin purchased this landscape at the sale of the Chocquet collection in 1899, "his first acquisition of a [Cezanne] at auction" (see R507).

Perhaps the most striking feature of Rewald's catalogue is its liberal use of quotation. This follows from the author's advocacy of comprehensive pluralism and reasoned consensus: "Comments by the same pen tend to become monotonous [whereas] different authors not only say things differently, they also offer different concepts."(8) How much difference does Rewald actually derive from his chosen sources? In fact, his catalogue acquires a distinct period or generational style corresponding to the identity of the limited group of scholars most frequently revisited. In addition to Rewald's unofficial collaborator Gowing (as many as 80 citations) and his official committee members Novotny (14) and Marchutz (only 5), the dominant scholarly voices are those of Theodore Reff (48 citations), Robert Ratcliffe (43), Roger Fry (36), Douglas Cooper (29), Albert Barnes (17), Meyer Schapiro (16), Kurt Badt (15), Anne Van Buren (11), and Wayne Andersen (10). The youngest among them - Reff, Ratcliffe, Van Buren, Andersen - were well established by the 1960s. With the exception of Gowing's work on the early Cezanne, scholarship dating after around 1973 is only rarely quoted in the entries. The more recent publications are nevertheless listed in the individual bibliographies, which are admirably up to date, although not completely so. (Warman regularized the catalogue apparatus and followed Rewald's own meticulousness in preserving as much of the documentary record as possible. Neither Rewald, Feilchenfeldt, nor Warman should be faulted for lapses that may have resulted during the early 1990s, the period of Rewald's last illnesses.)

With his genuine concern to be comprehensive, it is unfortunate that Rewald failed to incorporate the voices of younger generations. This reflects neither ignorance nor animosity on his part, but the extended calendar of production for his project, as well as the format he chose for presenting his material. Many of the individual commentaries, as opposed to the bibliographies and provenances, were completed decades ago and never revised.(9) Discussion of scholarly debates long ago resolved, or unresolved but long forgotten, occupies space that could have been assigned to more current issues and discoveries.(10) Users of the catalogue will question whether it was wise for Rewald to persist with his extraordinarily ambitious scheme of presentation, which recognized so many alternative voices, yet could find neither adequate time nor adequate space to present them. He was writing a book that would require its first pages to be revised by the time its final pages were composed - a formula for perpetual in-completion.(11)