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Artist or Maker: PAUL CÉZANNE 1839 - 1906

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Date: Executed circa 1888-92.

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Description: LE VIADUC

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Medium: Pencil and watercolor on paper

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Dimensions: 12 1/2 by 18 1/2 in. 31.8 by 47 cm

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Provenance: Paul Cézanne (son of the artist), Paris
Bernheim-Jeune, Paris
Leopold Badt, Munich
Ambroise Vollard, Paris
Etienne Bignou, New York
Stanley N. Barbee, Beverly Hills (acquired at the above sale and sold: Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, Barbee Collection, April 20, 1944, lot 10)
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, May 9, 2001, lot 338
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

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Exhibited: Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune; Berlin, Galerie Paul Cassirer, Les Aquarelles de Cézanne, 1907, no. 54 (Paris) and no. 48 (Berlin)
Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Aquarelles et Pastels, 1909, no. 15
New York, Photo-Secession, Watercolors by Cézanne, 1911, no. 13

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Published: Ambroise Vollard, Photo Archives of Cézanne Watercolors, no. 143
Lionello Venturi, Paul Cézanne, son Art, son Oeuvre, Paris, 1936, no. 999, illustrated p. 298
John Rewald, Paul Cézanne, The Watercolors, Boston, 1983, no. 326, illustrated

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Notes:

Rewald writes that in his watercolors from the late 1880s, Cézanne "strove to establish a balance between his masterful, economic yet eloquent drawing and the equally economic yet deft use of luminous spots of colors [...] They represent, if not a radical departure from the conventional concept of the role of white paper in watercolors, at least a type of harmony to which the whiteness of the support is essential. Its all-embracing emptiness intensifies the mysterious relationship between a few firm lines and a few color accents" (John Rewald, op. cit, p. 28). This relationship between the tone of the paper, the structural lines of the landscape and the soft spots of color that both emphasize the structure (as in the brown and blue branches at center) and slide across structure (as in the green patches in the foreground) suggests Cézanne's depiction of the world taking shape as he sees it. Cézanne does not depict a fully-formed world, in other words, but one that takes form through his perception. Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote that Cézanne "did not want to separate the stable things which we see and the shifting way in which they appear; he wanted to depict matter as it takes on form, the birth of order through spontaneous organization" (Merleau-Ponty, "Cézanne's Doubt", Sense and Non-Sense, Evanston, 1964, p. 13). The present work shows Cézanne's presentation of the play between color and line as they move together to bring architectural shape from the surface of the paper.