Sunday, August 30, 2015

Rocks in the Forest

Paul Cézanne
Rocks in the Forest
1890s
Metropolitan Museum

A century ago, these first six Cézanne oils were hanging together in the same house on 5th Avenue in New York. Louisine Havemeyer, their owner, was the widow of a superlative speculator who dominated the sugar markets of the late 19th century. H.O. Havemeyer succeeded in ruining his competitors and accumulating colossal wealth, but then he suddenly died. Mrs. Havemeyer spent the next thirty years collecting art, simultaneously launching herself as a militant activist for women's suffrage. By the terms of her will, something like two thousand works of art (including the six Cézannes) were left to the Metropolitan Museum.

Paul Cézanne
Still Life
1893-94
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Cézanne
Gulf of Marseilles
c. 1885
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Cézanne
Mont Sainte-Victoire
1882-85
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Cézanne
Portrait of Gustave Boyer
c. 1870-71
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Cézanne
Still Life
c. 1877
Metropolitan Museum

The six Cézanne watercolors below did not belong to Mrs. Havemeyer. The first is today at the Met nevertheless, while the others were deposited over the years at the Morgan Library by other American plutocrats.

Paul Cézanne
Bathers by a Bridge
c. 1900-06
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Cézanne
Trees
19th century
Morgan Library

Paul Cézanne
Plaster Cupid
19th century
Morgan Library

Paul Cézanne
Mont Sainte-Victoire
19th century
Morgan Library

Paul Cézanne
Still Life 
c. 1902-06
Morgan Library

Paul Cézanne
Bare Trees on a River
c. 1900-05
Morgan Library