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 after 30 or 40 minutes, I returned downstairs, I thanked the old woman, who bid me to return whenever I cared to. I realized while walking back to the town that somehow that brief visit would make an indelible mark upon my future.

Six weeks later I sailed for America. The year 1951 was spent in travel through Spain, France and Germany, but Aug. 29 I returned to Aix-en-Provence and once again visited the studio, finding it wonderfully unchanged and learning that Marcel Provence had meanwhile died. It was then that I thought something should be done to preserve it forever as a living monument to the human capacity for surpassing the banal limitations of mortal life.

A few weeks later, in Paris, I went to see Georges Salles, director of French Museums, a charming gentleman with whom I had formed a warm but casual friendship, having been introduced by Picasso. I was touched by the fact that in his office at the Louvre hung but a single work of art: a small etching of a girl's head by Cezanne, executed in 1873 under the tutelage of Dr. Gachet at Auvers-sur-Oise. I related my visit to Cezanne's studio and asked whether the French Museums might not eventually intervene to save for posterity this unique locale where so intense an evocation of Cezanne's spirit still survived. He replied that the prospect was highly appealing to him personally, but that he would have little hope of persuading superior authorities to subsidize it. Still, he promised to make inquiries at Aix-en-Provence and advise me of the situation there as concerned possible preservation of the studio. Some months passed before he invited me to tea in his beautiful apartment in the Louvre and told me that the studio was for sale for a sum then approximately between 25 and 30 thousand American dollars. At the time this was an appreciable amount but for what was at stake, it seemed to me almost trifling--a bargain in cultural value. Wouldn't it be possible, I suggested, to raise such an amount by appealing to French philanthropists and owners of works by Cezanne? Monsieur Salles suavely smiled in an expression of ironic skepticism. His compatriots, he said with a sigh, were rarely inclined to part with money for charitable purposes that would bring them but slight public prestige. He suggested that I try to raise money for preservation of the studio in America, where funds for such purposes were much more generously forthcoming. Meanwhile, he would keep an eye on happenings in Aix-en-Provence and try to prevent the studio's sale until, if possible, the purchase funds could be raised in America. For my part, I promised to do all I could to achieve that goal, though the promise must have seemed pretentious, to say the least, coming from a foreigner aged only 29.

It was not until November 1952 that I was able to actively initiate efforts in America to raise the money necessary for saving Cezanne's studio. I realized at once that in order to successfully solicit contributions for that purpose, it would be imperative to arrange somehow that such contributions could be deducted as charitable donations from the donors' income taxes, and in order to do this I would need the endorsement and assistance of the cultural attache of the French embassy, whose office, I learned, was fortunately in New York, where I was then living. Therefore I applied for an appointment with this gentleman, Monsieur Pierre Douzelot.