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

On the first of October, I left Paris for a month, visiting Italy, Greece and Egypt, and when I thought of Cezanne's studio and the money waiting in suspension in New York, I was preparing myself for disappointment. Oddly enough, I felt that I must have understated the power of Cezanne's art, failing precisely in what I most believed in. A letter from Madame Martinaud-Deplat was awaiting my return, advising me that she had prevailed upon Rector Blache and Dean Gros of the University of Aix-Marseille to accept responsibility for the studio and in my absence had instructed Madame Minor in New York to forward all the available funds to the university's credit in Aix. Consequently, my original plan to save the studio would be fulfilled, and she amiably added that her resolve to bring pressure to bear upon the reluctant university had been decisively stimulated by the conviction and sincerity with which I had spoken of the painter and his cultural supremacy during our luncheon.

So the project had come to grand fruition, after all. I wrote to John Rewald with the good news.

In early April 1954, I visited Aix, met with Rector Blache and Dean Gros at the university offices, and perceived that they had by now accepted responsibility for the studio with a becoming appreciation of cultural honor. Cleaning and repair had already gone forward in Les Lauves, in the garden as well as the interior, and it was expected that the official opening of the memorial to Cezanne could take place in July. I went to the studio, where several workmen were busy, and already recognized--some what to my dismay--that the spiritual presence of the great painter would be less exalting in the well-ordered aura of a museum than it had been in the breathtaking and splendid mess I had first encountered four years before. The happy few would probably be fewer and less happy than I'd hoped, but there would be some, at least, to sense a living rapport with the spirit of Cezanne in the very room where his greatest, final paintings had been created.

The official inauguration took place on Thursday, July 8, 1954, in the late morning. Since the project had been conceived and money contributed in the United States, the American ambassador, Douglas Dillon, had come from Paris to preside at the formal presentation. Rector Blache graciously accepted. Madame Bouchot-Saupique, Madame Guinet-Pechadre and Georges Salles were all present. Only Madame Minor was regrettably missing. And of course there was John Rewald, to whom the glory of Cezanne owed so much, and who was presented with the Legion of Honor that morning, an award long overdue for one who had already done so much to foster the appreciation of French art. After the ceremony there was a grand luncheon at the Hotel du Roy Rene, and so the saving of Cezanne's studio became henceforth a fait accompli.

A fait accompli, alas, which little by little undid the ideal accomplishment of what, after all, had been another era. Van Gogh was the idol of the public, and Picasso the world-famous iconoclast. Who could have foreseen in 1954 that Cezanne in a decade would surpass both as a heroic figure? And what was it that brought about this radical change in public opinion? It was money, of course. Cezanne's prices began to be reported on the front pages of newspapers. Popular magazines competed to reproduce and praise his most expensive canvases. And when Paul Mellon paid close to a million dollars at the Goldschmidt sale in 1958 for The Boy in the Red Vest, the general public--even if indifferent to the painting--decided that the artist definitely deserved respect. And with respect came curiosity.