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Lot Essay
Painted between 1879-1880, Melun vu depuis Le Mée-sur-Seine marks a transformative moment in Paul Cezanne’s oeuvre during which he became increasingly occupied by questions of balance and order, and how they would resolve themselves in paint. Linear passages of cream and slate grey describe this vision of Melun, a commune on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau where Cezanne lived for one year. While little is known about how the artist passed this period, and he made only a handful of paintings while there, including Pont de Maincy (FWN, no. 143; Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and L'Eglise Saint-Aspais vue de la place de la Préfecture à Melun (FWN, no. 170; The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia), these works would prove pivotal to Cezanne’s continuing refinement of his visual language and how he saw the world he depicted.
In the years leading up to his time in Melun, Cezanne largely abandoned the dark palette and thick, impasto paint that characterized his earlier canvases. Although he painted en plein air, he was rarely interested in the fleeting effects of light and climate. Even as his tonalities grew more luminous, Cezanne shied away from the key tenets of Impressionism, eschewing the spontaneous, rapid brushwork favored by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro. Instead of ephemerality, Cezanne sought solidity.
He achieved this desire for pictorial stability through the development of what art historian Theodore Reff has referred to as the “constructive stroke,” carefully organized parallel brushstrokes that the artist began to use at this time (quoted in A. Dombrowski, et al, Cezanne in the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, 2021, p. 122). This was a significant advancement for Cezanne and one which greatly altered how he represented a motif. Drawing attention to paint’s materiality allowed Cezanne to capture both “the binding logic of nature and its sensory richness,” and Melun vu depuis Le Mée-sur-Seine is replete with such marks (R. Verdi, Cezanne and Poussin: The Classical Vision of Landscape, exh. cat., National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1990, p. 49). These are particularly visible in the wide, flat sky, the cluster of buildings at the center of the canvas, and the dense forest in the distance.
For Cezanne, the constructive stroke was groundbreaking and he was fiercely protective of his novel approach. When Paul Gauguin asked of Pissarro exactly how Cezanne condensed expression and technique, Cezanne was said to have become apprehensive. Years later, he told the critic Gustave Geffroy, “I only had a petite sensation, and Gauguin stole it” (quoted in M. Dornan, ed., Conversations with Cezanne, Berkeley, 1991, p. 6). Cezanne seemingly fused his style of painting with his understanding of perception as if, observed Pavel Machotka, “the parallel touch were a way of seeing nature” and grasping the world (Cezanne: Landscape into Art, London, 1996, p. 49). With few exceptions, this petite sensation would define Cezanne’s mature output.
Held in the same family collection since 1974, Melun vu depuis Le Mée-sur-Seine has an illustrious provenance. The painting was originally purchased by Père Tanguy, the patron and collector who was central to the spread of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in Paris in the late-nineteenth century. Its second owner was by Andries Bonger, Theo van Gogh’s friend and brother-in-law, whose vast collection is primarily housed today at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and the Kunstmuseum Den Haag. In 1949, Melun vu depuis Le Mée-sur-Seine was acquired by the film producer and co-founder of Twentieth Century Pictures, William Goetz and his wife Edith. Their art collection included works by Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Henri Matisse, Berthe Morisot, and Pablo Picasso, among others, and was considered one of the most “distinguished” private collections in the United States (T. Howe quoted in M. Schumach, “Producer Speaks of Art Collection” in The New York Times, 24 August 1959, p. 16).
In the years leading up to his time in Melun, Cezanne largely abandoned the dark palette and thick, impasto paint that characterized his earlier canvases. Although he painted en plein air, he was rarely interested in the fleeting effects of light and climate. Even as his tonalities grew more luminous, Cezanne shied away from the key tenets of Impressionism, eschewing the spontaneous, rapid brushwork favored by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro. Instead of ephemerality, Cezanne sought solidity.
He achieved this desire for pictorial stability through the development of what art historian Theodore Reff has referred to as the “constructive stroke,” carefully organized parallel brushstrokes that the artist began to use at this time (quoted in A. Dombrowski, et al, Cezanne in the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, 2021, p. 122). This was a significant advancement for Cezanne and one which greatly altered how he represented a motif. Drawing attention to paint’s materiality allowed Cezanne to capture both “the binding logic of nature and its sensory richness,” and Melun vu depuis Le Mée-sur-Seine is replete with such marks (R. Verdi, Cezanne and Poussin: The Classical Vision of Landscape, exh. cat., National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1990, p. 49). These are particularly visible in the wide, flat sky, the cluster of buildings at the center of the canvas, and the dense forest in the distance.
For Cezanne, the constructive stroke was groundbreaking and he was fiercely protective of his novel approach. When Paul Gauguin asked of Pissarro exactly how Cezanne condensed expression and technique, Cezanne was said to have become apprehensive. Years later, he told the critic Gustave Geffroy, “I only had a petite sensation, and Gauguin stole it” (quoted in M. Dornan, ed., Conversations with Cezanne, Berkeley, 1991, p. 6). Cezanne seemingly fused his style of painting with his understanding of perception as if, observed Pavel Machotka, “the parallel touch were a way of seeing nature” and grasping the world (Cezanne: Landscape into Art, London, 1996, p. 49). With few exceptions, this petite sensation would define Cezanne’s mature output.
Held in the same family collection since 1974, Melun vu depuis Le Mée-sur-Seine has an illustrious provenance. The painting was originally purchased by Père Tanguy, the patron and collector who was central to the spread of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in Paris in the late-nineteenth century. Its second owner was by Andries Bonger, Theo van Gogh’s friend and brother-in-law, whose vast collection is primarily housed today at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and the Kunstmuseum Den Haag. In 1949, Melun vu depuis Le Mée-sur-Seine was acquired by the film producer and co-founder of Twentieth Century Pictures, William Goetz and his wife Edith. Their art collection included works by Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Henri Matisse, Berthe Morisot, and Pablo Picasso, among others, and was considered one of the most “distinguished” private collections in the United States (T. Howe quoted in M. Schumach, “Producer Speaks of Art Collection” in The New York Times, 24 August 1959, p. 16).