Saving Cezanne's studio: the author recalls his youthful efforts to preserve Cezanne's final studio in Aix-en-Provence, and the disillusion that followed his successful campaign - Memoir

Art in America, July, 2002 by James Lord

When for the first time I came to Aix-en-Provence on Monday, Sept. 13, 1950, I was seized at once by a sense of unique enchantment destined to last a lifetime. To those who know the place, I need not explain why, and to those who don't, I can only extend my heartfelt commiseration. There was for me, to be sure, something more to Aix than the time-defiant loveliness and splendor of the town itself, because it stands apart in the history of Western civilization as the birthplace and lifelong home of Paul Cezanne, the greatest painter to have lived since Rembrandt, an opinion, indeed, with which from the depths of his great and desolate heart the artist himself humbly but categorically concurred.

From my early adolescence I had admired the works of Cezanne in New York's museums more than those of any other painter of modern times, and thus the delight of discovering Aix's beauty was somewhat overshadowed by the excitement of Cezanne's presence. He had been dead, of course, for 45 years, but while still alive had walked these unchanged streets in lonesome dignity and painted many masterpieces in the nearby countryside dominated by the symbolic peak of Mont Sainte-Victoire.

What I consequently wanted more than anything else that afternoon was some sense of a living rapport with the spirit of that supreme creator in the town where he had never as yet been celebrated by a single exhibition. I recalled having read in the biography of Cezanne by John Rewald that in the last years of the artist's life he had built on a slope overlooking the northern outskirts of the city a studio in which he had painted many of his greatest compositions, notably the final large pictures of female bathers. In another book I had long pored over photographs of the exterior and interior of this isolated building, and it was there, I thought, if it still stood on the obscure roadway called the Chemin des Lauves, that I might hope to encounter some feeling of vital rapprochement with the great man who had enriched my life.

So I walked up past the cathedral, keeping in a northerly direction, crossed a wide boulevard and came to the apparent outskirts of Aix. Not knowing the way to my destination, I went into a grocery store to inquire. A small and bent old woman stood behind the counter. She must have been well over 70, I thought, and therefore would have been about 30 when Cezanne died. I said, "Could you tell me where to find Cezanne's studio?" "Cezanne?" she murmured with a frown of puzzlement. "Cezanne? All I can tell you is that he's not from this neighborhood." "Well then," I persisted, "maybe you can tell me how to find the Chemin des Lauves."

This she did irritably explain, and I was lucky, because it wasn't far. The Chemin des Lauves was a narrow, unpaved road rising up an overgrown hillside, and Cezanne's studio, which I recognized at once from familiar photographs, stood by itself to the left about halfway to the hilltop, surrounded by a masonry wall. A wooden gate was ajar. I went inside. The building was not large, two stories in height, with a door and two windows at ground level and three windows above. When I knocked, an aged, white-haired woman wearing a tattered apron appeared. She amicably confirmed that this had indeed been Cezanne's studio, which occupied the entire second floor. The proprietor was a man named Marcel Provence, who revered the artist's memory and had preserved his studio exactly as it had always been during the artist's lifetime. I asked whether I might be allowed to visit the studio. Oh, certainly, the old woman replied. It was very rare that anyone interested in the artist came along. Monsieur Provence happened to be absent, but he would gladly have welcomed me had he been at home. Gesturing toward a curved stairway, she told me to go up and look around to my heart's content.

I did so, and it was one of the most exalting, deeply moving experiences of my life. The large, high room was in considerable disorder, but it was Cezanne's disorder, and one felt that he might have stepped outside but a few minutes before to paint a watercolor of his beloved mountain viewed from the nearby hilltop. The artist's easel, paint box, palettes, paintbrushes and dried tubes of paint occupied a corner. The north wall held a vast window. Upon a long shelf against the west wall were aligned many bottles, vases, dishes, sugar bowls, candlesticks, skulls and other items instantly familiar to anyone who knew the many majestic still lifes in which they appeared. There were in addition several pieces of furniture also familiar from still lifes painted before the studio was built. The artist had obviously brought with him to Les Lauves numerous material objects that had become visually vital to him. In a corner opposite the door there even remained several vests, overcoats and a hat recognizable as Cezanne's from the photographs taken by Emile Bernard and K.X. Roussel. Indeed, as if by a miracle, I had come to the place, the only place still surviving, where one could commune with the spirit of the great artist in the unchanged surroundings that had witnessed and nourished him. I felt that I was breathing the very same air which had enlivened the respiration of the artist. This was a grand moment of fantasy; it was sustained by the certainty that art is itself the essential breath of life.