Auvers, Panoramic View
1873–75
Oil on canvas; 65.2 × 81.3 cm (25 5/8 × 32 in.)
The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.422
FWN 83
The Artistic Community in and Around Auvers-sur-Oise
Paul Cezanne arrived in the small village of Auvers-sur-Oise, located three kilometers (almost two miles) from the larger town of Pontoise to the west and just under thirty kilometers (eighteen and a half miles) from Paris, in September 1872. He stayed there until early 1874 and subsequently made several shorter visits periodically until 1881.[1] Auvers, Panoramic View was begun during his first and longest stay.[2]1
Cezanne’s imminent arrival is mentioned in a letter of September 3, 1872, written by his mentor, Camille Pissarro, who had settled in Pontoise in April 1872.[3] In this letter Pissarro informed the painter Antoine Guillemet, “Our Cezanne gives us hope and I have seen and have at home a painting of remarkable vigour and strength. If, as I hope, he remains for some time in Auvers, where he is going to stay, he will astonish many artists who were too quick to condemn him.”[4]2
The painting Pissarro mentioned was Cezanne’s Wine Market at Jussieu of 1872 (fig. 1.1). This work is relatively dark and uses strong tonal contrast and impasto to model forms.[5] It is markedly different from another work of the same year, a copy that Cezanne (fig. 1.2) made of Pissarro’s Louveciennes of 1871 just prior to his arrival in Auvers. Pissarro’s son Lucien stated that making this work allowed Cezanne to learn the “luminous” technique of plein-air painting that Pissarro employed in the original.[6] The copy is thus relatively even in tonal range and uses differences of hue as well as tone to give depth to the scene. Auvers, Panoramic View is similar in this respect.3
Fig. 1.1
Paul Cezanne (French, 1839–1906). The Wine Market at Jussieu, 1872 (FWN 62). Oil on canvas; 73 × 92 cm (28 11/16 × 36 3/16 in.). Portland Museum of Art, Oregon, Museum Purchase: Private Donors’ Fund, 1999.25.
Fig. 1.2
Paul Cezanne, after Camille Pissarro (French, 1830–1903). View of Louveciennes, 1872 (FWN 63). Oil on canvas; 73 × 92 cm (28 11/16 × 36 3/16 in.). Private collection.
The two painters were close, Pissarro providing Cezanne with invaluable moral support as well as technical advice.[7] Several photographs attest to their professional collaboration, including one of them setting off together to paint the landscape around Pontoise (fig. 1.3). Similarly, Lucien recalled of the period 1872–73 in a 1912 letter to his brother Paul-Émile, “At that time Cezanne lived in Auvers and every day he walked the 3 kilometers to work with father—there were endless theories—I remember that one day they had special palette knives brought from Paris to make studies with knives. There are several paintings made by the two painters at that time—the motifs and execution are necessarily similar, since they were looking for the same things with the same instruments and the same motifs.”[8]4
Fig. 1.3
Camille Pissarro and Cezanne on their way to the motif, c. 1873. Pissarro family archives.
The first owner of Auvers, Panoramic View was Dr. Paul-Ferdinand Gachet (see Provenance); his son, Paul-Louis, later made a watercolor copy of it. Dr. Gachet acquired his property in Auvers in April 1872 at the western end of rue Rémy.[9] By Cezanne’s arrival he was an accomplished amateur artist and had been a patron of modern art for some time.[10] He had met Cezanne’s father in 1858, although they did not stay in touch.[11] More importantly, Gachet had been Pissarro’s doctor since 1871 and, after the artist’s move to Pontoise, had encouraged him to pursue his interest in etching by allowing him to use the press he had installed in the attic studio in his house.[12] He did the same for Cezanne.[13] Since Cezanne was installed in cramped accommodations on the same street as Gachet, at 66, rue Rémy (fig. 1.4) with his partner, Hortense Fiquet, and their infant son, it was a great help that the doctor allowed him to paint in his studio as well, which the artist rearranged to ensure that it was “lit with good light.”[14] According to Paul-Louis Gachet, still lifes made in the doctor’s studio after 1872 (which were painted, on the doctor’s advice, on a “smaller format” canvas to “compensate for the slowness of Cezanne’s craft”) “become lighter and lighter, as do the three Houses of Dr. Gachet and the Panorama (Auvers).”[15]5
Fig. 1.4
Cezanne’s house at 66, rue Rémy, Auvers, March 2025. Photo: Paul Smith.
The Motif
In The House of Dr. Gachet at Auvers-sur-Oise (fig. 1.5), the doctor’s house—with its hip roof—is seen side-on, much as it is depicted at the extreme left of the top row of buildings in Auvers, Panoramic View (fig. 1.6). The scene in Chicago’s painting (including Gachet’s house) is described in detail by Paul-Louis in the typescript catalogue he made of his father’s collection in 1928:
6
“To paint it, Cézanne had climbed up the hillside, above Chérielle, one of the highest points, and, facing east where the Quartier du Four dominated in the right, and in front of him those of Rémys and Vessenots, above which the heights of Bonneville, Méry, as far as Bessancourt, Frépillon, Sognolles, etc. stood out in silhouette on the other side of the Oise valley … a veritable panomara [sic]! …7
On the lower right, the three brown tiled roofs, bordered by whitish flashings, the two roofs in a row, covered in violet-blue slates, the first with pink chimneys, are—seen from behind—the buildings of the Four farm. …8
Almost in the middle of the canvas, a factory chimney, that of a former starch factory, located at Les Vessenots, in the Clos du Sanglier or Clos Watteau. … Further down, on the left, the House of the Hanged Man … and, at the very top, the Maison Gachet, a little too slender, but clearly recognizable by its four-sloped roof, covered in brown tiles, with its single west-facing window.”[16] 9
Fig. 1.5
Paul Cezanne. The House of Dr. Gachet at Auvers-sur-Oise, 1872–73 (FWN 71). Oil on canvas; 61.6 × 51.1 cm (24 1/4 × 20 1/8 in.). Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, Collection of Mary C. and James W. Fosburgh, B.A. 1933, M.A. 1935.
Fig. 1.6
Detail of Dr. Gachet’s house in Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
The “House of the Hanged Man” is the dwelling with the brown roof behind the smaller building with the white gable end toward the front left of Auvers, Panoramic View (fig. 1.7).[17] This was the motif of the painting Cezanne exhibited at the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874 (fig. 1.8), which represents other houses visible in Auvers, Panoramic View, and a section of the same horizon.[18]10
Fig. 1.7
Detail of the house of the hanged man in Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Fig. 1.8
Paul Cezanne. The House of the Hanged Man, 1873 (FWN 81). Oil on canvas; 55 × 66 cm (21 5/8 × 26 in.). Musée d’Orsay, Paris, gift of Count Isaac de Camondo, 1911, RF 1970.
The path just visible in the bottom left corner of Auvers, Panoramic View (which continues from Gachet’s house toward the top left corner of the landscape) has been identified as the sente (path) de Pontoise, which agricultural workers used to make the trip from Auvers to the wheatfields of the Vexin plateau to the north.[19] Cezanne also framed his composition so that it omitted most of the picturesque features mentioned in guidebooks that would have been visible from this location, including the church of Notre-Dame d’Auvers, later immortalized by Vincent van Gogh.[20] The view—to the east-northeast—is largely obstructed today, but an approximation can still be obtained from the present chemin (path) de Meulières, which rises steeply eastward over Auvers (fig. 1.9).[21]11
Fig. 1.9
The motif for Auvers, Panoramic View, from the chemin de Meulières, March 2025. Photo: Paul Smith.
The title, Auvers, Panoramic View, is not original. Cezanne rarely gave his paintings titles, as he seldom exhibited. Gachet fils catalogued the painting as Panorama (Auvers) in 1928,[22] but it first acquired something closer to its modern title when it was exhibited in 1912 as Auvers-sur-Oise (Vue panoramique).[23] The words “view” and, perhaps more so, “panorama” imply that Cezanne’s painting was complicit with a set of practices involving the spectacularization of the landscape for the purposes of tourism, which were themselves embedded within a wider bourgeois culture of consumption characteristic of a burgeoning monopoly capitalism.[24] But Cezanne’s calculated avoidance of guidebook views of Auvers and his adoption of a viewpoint known to wayfaring workers belie any sympathy with such practices. 12
A view and a panorama also objectify and distance an entire scene so as to render implicitly “feminine” nature passively subject to an all-encompassing male gaze.[25] The same is not true of what Cezanne called the “motif.”[26] Cezanne first used this term in a letter of October 19, 1866, to his school friend, the novelist Émile Zola, in which he described how he was making a painting of two friends “setting off for the motif (the landscape that is).”[27] In a later letter, from 1883, he distinguished between “views” and “motifs,” implying that only the latter had the particular qualities that made them apt for painting.[28] His usage suggests that a motif, for Cezanne, partly retained its etymological sense of “motive,” or indicated a scene that could motivate the painter to act or respond appropriately to it, not simply view it from afar.[29]13
It is possible to gain some sense of what made Auvers, Panoramic View a motif in this sense by comparing this with Cezanne’s pencil sketch of the same scene from a slightly different viewpoint (fig. 1.10), even though it has been cut off along the lower and left edges.[30] The drawing could be the study of a motif that Cezanne considered worth developing into a painting.[31] This is suggested by the lightness of Cezanne’s touch, apart from some obvious restatement of the roof of the building in the left foreground. 14
Fig. 1.10
Paul Cezanne. Landscape with Houses and Trees, 1873–74 (FWN 1030). Graphite on laid paper; 14.8 × 22.4 cm (5 13/16 × 8 13/16 in.). Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland, Kupferstichkabinett, 1934.179.
The drawing does, in any case, include several elements of the scene depicted in Auvers, Panoramic View. The chimney of the starch factory that appears at the rear of the houses in the painting (fig. 1.11) can be seen in the left middle distance. The gables of the pair of houses in front and to the right of the house of the hanged man, partially hidden in the painting by a tree and a smaller house (fig. 1.12), are plainly visible at the left of the drawing. The fact that the chimney and these houses are roughly the same height in the drawing implies that they are observed from a much greater distance than in the painting, where the chimney is much smaller in comparison. The closer viewpoint in the painting also explains why the houses in its foreground are comparatively large. These differences suggest that Cezanne abandoned the idea of a traditional panorama in favor of a more intimate composition in which the spectator is brought into a proximal, active, and reciprocal relationship with the motif.
15
Fig. 1.11
Detail of chimney of starch factory in Les Vessenots in Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Fig. 1.12
Detail of two houses with tree in front in Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
The art historian Richard Shiff has argued persuasively that Cezanne rejected more conventional “panoramic” modes of vision in favor of a “piecemeal” way of seeing akin to the bit-by-bit perception characteristic of touch.[32] Cezanne said nothing at the time to indicate this applied to Auvers, Panoramic View. But later in life, when he made the majority of his most illuminating statements, he did address the connection between sight and touch. Around 1900, in regard to his practice while out painting, he told the poet Joachim Gasquet, “I hold my motif.”[33] And in 1902 he informed the amateur painter Jules Borély, “Look, that tree trunk: between us and it there is a space, an atmosphere, I grant you that. But then again it is this palpable, resistant trunk, this body.”[34] The philosopher (and aficionado of Cezanne’s painting) Maurice Merleau-Ponty subsequently described a similar way of seeing when he set out how vision has an unconscious, “primordial” substrate in which the distinction between “touch and sight” is unknown.[35] Seeing thus involves the “blind palpation” of objects—as Cezanne put it.[36] Objects also accrue “proximity through distance” via visual “palpation”—as Cezanne indicated by his use of the word “this” (and perhaps a gesture of some sort).[37] Cezanne’s use of the word “body” in relation to the tree suggests that his mode of seeing involved what Merleau-Ponty called “narcissism,” or how the world appears to us in a form that reflects our bodily interest in it.[38]16
The tree in the left foreground of Auvers, Panoramic View (see fig. 1.12) embodies this way of seeing inasmuch as its foliage forms a dense screen or a solid mass that thwarts or blocks any attempts to see through it. (This is probably a device Cezanne learned from Pissarro, who had earlier exploited a slightly less opaque screen of trees in the middle ground of Chestnut Trees at Louveciennes, Spring [fig. 1.13].)[39] Instead, it invites what Merleau-Ponty terms the “probing” of the “eye” and “hand”: We attempt to feel—rather than simply see—our way beyond it.[40] It is therefore palpable substance, and as such lies close to hand. 17
Fig. 1.13
Camille Pissarro (French, 1830–1903). Chestnut Trees at Louveciennes, Spring, 1870. Oil on canvas; 59.5 × 73 cm (23 7/16 × 28 3/4 in.). Museum Langmatt, Baden, Switzerland, no. 68.
The houses in Auvers, Panoramic View are not rendered systematically in vanishing-point perspective but in a looser form, approximating an “oblique” projection.[41] The house therefore demonstrates how, when an object’s side lies oblique to our line of sight, we will attempt to grasp it virtually in its “optimum,” “frontal” orientation.[42] The house with the brown roof at the right of the painting, just above the two houses at the front with blue roofs (fig. 1.14), exemplifies this mode of seeing. Although its front face and its gable end must in fact be perpendicular to one another, the painting presents these surfaces almost as if they run continuously, in the same plane—as they would appear to a spectator (somehow) situated directly in front of both simultaneously. Cezanne achieved this impression by fudging the line created by tonal contrast at the edge between the two walls (which is preserved in the house immediately behind it to its left [fig. 1.15]). Cezanne also hid the lower part of the dividing edge between the two sides, as well as the area where the sides meet the ground, behind vegetation, making it difficult to disambiguate the shape they form. Viewers are thus invited to “grasp” what Merleau-Ponty would call the “sense”—that is, both the orientation of the house and its meaning for the body—for themselves.[43]18
Fig. 1.14
Detail of house at the right with a brown roof in Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Fig. 1.15
Detail of house in Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Light and Color
Gachet fils, citing a “note” made by his father, wrote that Cezanne would visit the motif “twice a day, in the morning, and in the evening, in gray weather, and in clear weather.”[44] The prospect in Auvers, Panoramic View is toward east-northeast, so it was likely painted in the morning, since the light that plays on the south-facing walls of the houses is slightly stronger than it is on those facing west. The work was also painted when the sky was a little overcast, creating an even light. The fact that Gachet’s house (see fig. 1.6) looks too tall (or “slender”) indicates these conditions. This is because a building looks farther away when the air is heavy than it does on a clear day, and as a result we infer that it must be taller to present the same height.[45]19
The season depicted in Auvers, Panoramic View must be spring or summer, given the vegetation. But it seems likely that Cezanne observed the scene over a long period, possibly months. Gachet’s note states that Cezanne “often persisted in working on a painting from one season to the next, from one year to the next, in such a way that a spring in 1873 would eventually become a snow effect in 1874.”[46] Something similar is at work in The House of the Hanged Man (see fig. 1.8), which ended up as a painting of winter, although it was probably begun much earlier, if its thick, heavily worked paint is a reliable indication.[47] Equally, the extensive addition of bright yellow at a late stage in Auvers, Panoramic View, particularly over the lower portion of the painting, could suggest a seasonal change in the vegetation (although it could just as well represent an attempt to enliven the composition). 20
The lack of temporal specificity in the painting is accompanied by the absence of sharp detail. Around this time, Cezanne developed the habit of squinting, or viewing the scene through half-closed eyes. Lucien Pissarro told his brother Paul-Émile in 1912 that, one market day in Pontoise, Cezanne was “looking while squinting at the curious tones formed by this mix of peasants and townsfolk.”[48] Squinting was a technique employed by many painters at the time in order to simplify the tones and colors in the scene before them with a view to laying in the principal relationships. But the Impressionists were committed to sustaining this mode of vision throughout the painting process.[49] It lies behind the statement Cezanne made in later life to Joachim Gasquet: “I see. In patches.”[50]21
In De l’intelligence, the theorist and historian Hippolyte Taine claimed that the “talent” of “colorist painters” consisted “in seeing their model as a patch composed solely of color.”[51] Drawing on a long tradition of empiricist thinking, Taine argued that vision was in fact a two-stage process wherein knowledge and experience shaped pure visual “sensation” into a world of recognizable objects, before which it took the form of “variously colored patches.”[52] The color-patch vision evidenced in Auvers, Panoramic View is therefore consistent with Pissarro’s recollection in 1895 that, in the 1870s, he and Cezanne “each kept to the only thing that counted, ‘his own sensation.’”[53]Cezanne himself also used this word in the 1870s to describe what he saw.[54]22
Rendering color-patch vision required developing new techniques of paint application. Gustave Coquiot cites a remark made by a peasant from Auvers: “M. Pissarro, while working, would prick (and the peasant makes a gesture) and M. Cézanne would dab (another gesture).”[55] Regarding the two artists’ brushwork, Lucien Pissarro told Paul-Émile in 1912 that “they did not paint with knives for long,” but “tried the divided brushstroke—it was at this point, I think, that Cezanne began to paint with his vertical divisions, and Papa, adopting long brushes, painted in tiny little commas.”[56] This suggests that The House of the Hanged Man, clearly painted with a palette knife, was made toward the beginning of Cezanne’s stay in Auvers. By the same account, Auvers, Panoramic View, which was not, was begun later. (Some of the paintwork seems nevertheless to have been deliberately smoothed, notably the pink area below and to the left of the house of the hanged man [see fig. 1.7].)[57] Cezanne did employ relatively discrete, vertically oriented square brushstrokes in some of the houses, although alongside horizontal and diagonal touches (see figs. 1.7, 1.14–1.15). The brushwork is markedly different in the background and sky, which are much more thinly painted, as shown by a transmitted-light image (fig. 1.16). In the landscape, Cezanne used more fluid, mostly horizontal touches (fig. 1.17), while in some parts of the sky, he deployed more cursive brushwork (fig. 1.18). 23
Figs. 1.16–1.18
Fig. 1.16
Transmitted-light image of Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Fig. 1.17
Detail of brushwork in the landscape background of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Fig. 1.18
Detail of brushwork over exposed ground in the sky in Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Ton
In a letter of June 24, 1874, Cézanne told Pissarro that while in Aix-en-Provence he had tried to inform the director of the Musée d’Aix (now the Musée Granet) about his recent technique of “replacing modeling by the study of tons.”[58] He had also been experimenting with the technique himself since, according to Lucien, he copied Pissarro’s Louveciennes in order “to understand certain theories” it embodied.[59]24
What Cezanne meant by ton is best appreciated by consulting its usage by the Impressionist Félix Bracquemond, who stipulated in Du dessin et de la couleur of 1885 that the phrase “right ton combined in a single expression the idea of modeling and that of color, the word ton having the dual meaning of value and coloration.”[60]And in 1901 Cezanne as good as paraphrased Bracquemond when he told the poet Léo Larguier that “rightness of ton gives the luminosity and the modeling of the object at the same time” within a painting whose colors “harmonize.”[61] Although made much later, this statement undoubtedly reflects discussions Cezanne had with Pissarro around 1873, since Lucien told Paul-Émile in 1912 that similar language was used during discussions in Pontoise at this time, with one of the painters involved claiming that “we do not paint a figure, we create accords.”[62]25
Cezanne’s move toward the use of tons was already underway when he was painting The House of the Hanged Man. Although many areas rely on differences of tone (or luminosity) alone to model form, Cezanne employed chromatic contrasts between red and green or orange and blue in several areas of the painting as well, notably in the houses in the distance. In Auvers, Panoramic View, the more thinly applied background is largely tonal (apart from some vermillion touches added at a late stage), as is much of the more thickly painted greenery in the lower half. (This approach is facilitated by Cezanne’s use of a warmish gray ground, which serves roughly as the mid-tone and is still visible in exposed areas of the sky [see fig. 1.18].) At some later stage, a dull pink was introduced into the roofs of several houses on the left and into the walls of those houses on the right with the brown roofs (see figs. 1.14–1.15). The blue in the roofs of the houses on the left was also intensified (fig. 1.19), perhaps in response to the color of their relatives on the right. Similarly, the extensive yellow touches in the foreground (mixed in with green and white paint picked up from the palette) were applied wet-in-wet over earlier layers (see fig. 1.7). By contrast, the strong vermillion touches in the roofs and chimneys of the houses extending over the entire width of the painting roughly halfway down, and which enliven the greens through contrast, were mostly applied over dry paint, and were probably added last. Just how little these vermillion touches rely on tonal contrast can be seen in black-and-white images, where they sometimes fade into the background (fig. 1.20). Even the most salient touch in the painting, toward the left edge, all but disappears when its hue is removed (figs. 1.21–1.22). 26
Figs. 1.19–1.22
Fig. 1.19
Detail of blue colors intensified in the roofs of the houses at left in Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Fig. 1.20
Black-and-white detail of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Fig. 1.21
Detail of vermillion at left in Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Fig. 1.22
Black-and-white detail of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
In some areas, Cezanne harmonized complementary colors by blending them physically into one another to create “broken” colors. Notably, he blended a green into the pinkish roof of the house of the hanged man to create a faintly colored gray (see fig. 1.7).[63] Because he continually returned to the painting to harmonize its colors, it is possible only to a limited extent to identify the stages at which Cezanne added particular colors (see Technical Report). This means that the more heavily worked areas of the painting contain a wide variety of hues in both pure and mixed forms. Most obviously, the walls of the houses, although in principle white, are in fact subtly but richly colored (see figs. 1.7, 1.14–1.15). The colors in the house with the blue roof toward the bottom right corner of the painting (fig. 1.23) have a carefully balanced harmony from the contrast of pink and pale green (representing reflections from the surrounding verdure).[64]27
Fig. 1.23
Detail of harmonic contrast of pink and green in Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
The tightly woven harmony of Auvers, Panoramic View is so successful that it disguises a major anomaly in the form of the wedge of pinkish ochre between the large blue house in the right foreground and the houses above it with brown roofs (fig. 1.24; see Technical Report). Although this functions perfectly well chromatically, since it has been carefully modulated to fit in with its neighbors, it is nevertheless all but impossible to make sense of what it represents.
28
Fig. 1.24
Detail of brown wedge in Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Technical Summary
Cezanne painted Auvers, Panoramic View on a plain-weave, no. 25 portrait (figure) standard-size canvas. The canvas was primed on the stretcher with a light brownish-gray ground. There is no obvious underdrawing or compositional planning, but Cezanne may have mapped out or begun the composition using broad applications of thinned paint and some linear contour strokes. The sky, the distant hills, and the grass in the lower left corner appear quickly painted using open brushwork applied in just one or two layers that leave the ground visible throughout. By contrast, Cezanne densely painted the village and the foreground vegetation in a complex network of thick, opaque brushstrokes. This central area of the composition was heavily built up, probably over multiple sessions, with both wet-on-wet and wet-over-dry brushwork. While Cezanne painted the buildings in the lower right quadrant as three-dimensional structures, he composed the other buildings using a patchwork of geometric planes of color, articulating few details of the architecture. He created a sense of atmospheric perspective in the landscape through the general use of warm yellow-green hues in the foreground and cooler blue-green tones in the distance. However, his use of equally intense color across the canvas and the tightly packed arrangement of the buildings play with the viewer’s perception of space, volume, and distance. 30
Layered Image Viewer
Fig. 1.25
Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422. Interactive image. Use the icons at lower right and the slide bar to compare conservation images and overlays.
Signature
Signature/stamp: Not signed or dated.31
Structure and Technique
Support
Canvas: Linen (estimated).[65]32
Standard format: The canvas corresponds closely to a no. 25 portrait (figure) standard size (81 × 65 cm), which was turned horizontally.[66]33
Weave: Plain weave. Average thread count (standard deviation): 11.6V (0.5) × 14.0H (0.4) threads/cm. The horizontal threads were determined to correspond to the warp and the vertical threads to the weft.[67]34
Canvas characteristics: Medium weight, loosely woven. Several tiny pinpoint holes at the interstices of the canvas threads appear to have been caused by air bubbles trapped in the openings in the canvas weave that surfaced through the paint layer. There are some irregularities in the weave and variations in thread thickness.35
Stretching: Current stretching: The current stretching dates to the undocumented aqueous lining. Only a few small areas on each tacking margin could be examined due to the presence of brown paper tape on the edges (see Conservation History). The edges of the lining canvas appear to have been trimmed so that they do not extend beyond the original tacking edges. The close spacing of the metal tacks, visible in the X-ray, indicates the presence of a double set of tacks and suggests that the original tacking edges were separated from those of the lining canvas and tacked down separately.36
Original stretching: There is strong cusping on all four sides; it is more intense on the left and right sides, corresponding to the weft threads. Original tacks spaced approximately 6–9 cm apart, based on the cusping pattern.37
Stretcher/strainer: Current stretcher: The current stretcher may be original to the painting or at least dates to early in its history. It is a six-membered wooden stretcher with butt-ended mortise and tenon joints and twelve keys. Stretcher bar depth, 1.5 (inner) to 1.8 (outer) cm; stretcher bar width, 6.0–6.2 cm; crossbar depth, 1.2 cm; crossbar width, 6 cm (fig. 1.26).38
Fig. 1.26
Verso of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Original stretcher: See above.39
Manufacturer’s/supplier’s marks: There are stamps on the top and bottom ends of the vertical crossbar: 25w [encircled] (fig. 1.27), referring to the no. 25 standard stretcher size.
40
Fig. 1.27
Verso detail of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75) showing the “25w” stamp, which refers to the stretcher size. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Preparatory Layers
Sizing: Not determined (probably glue).41
Ground application/texture: The canvas was primed after it was mounted on the stretcher. Without compelling evidence to the contrary, it is assumed that the canvas was primed by a color merchant. The ground contains some coarse white particles, which are visible under magnification (fig. 1.28).
42
Fig. 1.28
Photomicrograph of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75) showing an area of exposed brownish-gray ground. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Color: Light brownish gray (fig. 1.29). The ground remains visible between painted forms and through thin paint applications, particularly in the sky, imparting an overall subdued tonality throughout the composition.
43
Fig. 1.29
Photomicrograph of a cross section from Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75) showing the brownish-gray ground underneath a layer of green paint. Original magnification: 200×. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Materials/composition: Analysis indicates that the ground contains a mixture of lead white and barite with calcium sulfate and traces of bone black and a yellow pigment that was not identified.[68]44
Binder: Oil (estimated).45
Compositional Planning/Underdrawing/Painted Sketch
Extent/character: No underdrawing was observed with infrared reflectography or microscopic examination, though it is possible that any underdrawing could be obscured by thick paint applications. In one area—the small blue structure near the upper left corner—strokes of dilute blue and green paint applied directly on top of the ground may indicate that Cezanne mapped out elements of the composition using linear contour strokes.46
Medium/technique: Possibly some preliminary compositional planning in dilute paint.47
Revisions: There are no indications of compositional changes or revisions.48
Paint Layer
Application/technique and artist’s revision: Cezanne painted the work over several sessions, starting with broad applications of thinned paint, and possibly some linear contour strokes, to map out the composition. He painted the sky, the distant hills, and the greenery in the lower left corner using open brushwork applied in just one or two layers. In these areas, the brownish-gray ground shows through the thin paint applications and occasionally provides a mid-tone where it was intentionally left exposed; for example, around the white clouds and in some of the distant buildings where small patches of exposed ground sometimes represent a wall or a roof (fig. 1.30). By contrast, the paint was applied densely in the village, particularly on the lower half of the canvas, where it exhibits a complex buildup of strokes of opaque paint and low impasto (fig. 1.31). The brushwork is not blended or worked wet-in-wet on the canvas, and individual brushstrokes are often streaked with unmixed colors picked up from the palette. The texture of the medium-weight, loose-weave canvas is evident throughout the painting, even in areas of thick brushwork where a corrugated texture resulted from the brush being lightly dragged across the surface, accumulating paint along the horizontal or vertical canvas threads depending on the orientation of the brushstroke (fig. 1.32). Areas of wet-over-dry paint application suggest that Cezanne worked on the painting over some period of time. 49
Figs. 1.30–1.32
Fig. 1.30
Detail of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75) showing areas of exposed brownish-gray ground among the buildings. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Fig. 1.31
X-ray of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75). The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Fig. 1.32
Detail of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75) showing the texture of the canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Cezanne’s manner of representing the architecture varies markedly from the right to the left side of the composition. The buildings in the right foreground and middle distance, although not modeled in a traditional sense, were painted as three-dimensional structures. With the light source entering the composition from the right, the sides of the buildings facing in that direction are illuminated, and there is a suggestion of shadow on the adjacent walls. Cezanne painted these buildings with clearly delineated windows, doors, and chimneys. The use of discrete strokes of darker or lighter paint along the edges of the rooftops conveys a sense of recession into space. The buildings on the left and in the distance on the right, by comparison, appear as more of a patchwork of geometric planes in mostly unmodulated tones of white, blue, red, and brown that denote the walls, roofs, and chimneys without any detailed description of architectural features. Cezanne used a similar intensity of color regardless of how distant the building is from the viewer. In some cases, patches of similar color from different structures appear to advance or exist on the same plane. For example, in the cluster of buildings on the mid-left side of the canvas, the dark-blue roofs, improbably interconnected on the surface of the painting, seem to converge on one plane despite their distance from one another (fig. 1.33). The scattered red roofs and chimneys produce a similar effect. Cezanne added many of these touches in the later painting stages, using a more intense red hue than the range of dull reds and browns in the right foreground. He created some sense of atmospheric perspective in his treatment of the landscape, using blue-green tones drawn in long, smooth, horizontal strokes in the distant fields, in contrast with the discrete, multidirectional strokes of bright yellow-greens that dominate the foreground vegetation (fig. 1.34); however, the overall bright illumination of the scene and Cezanne’s placement of patches of color create a sense of compressed space in the village, such that the buildings almost appear to be stacked on one another rather than receding into space.
50
Fig. 1.33
Detail of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75) showing the blue rooftops. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Fig. 1.34
Detail of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75) showing the dense brushwork in the foreground vegetation. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
There are no obvious compositional changes in the more heavily worked areas; in fact, borders around most of the forms, where the paint is either relatively thin or there is a gap or grooved contour between forms, indicates that Cezanne built up the composition from the initial lay-in without significant revisions or adjustments. The buildings in the foreground that are largely obscured by vegetation appear to have been conceived this way: It does not appear that Cezanne painted any of these structures in their entirety and then added foliage on top; rather, he painted only the planes that would surface above the foliage. He did, however, work back and forth to some extent between the buildings and the vegetation. This is evident in the way that brushstrokes variably overlap; for example, isolated strokes of green were applied on top of the dried paint of the buildings, and conversely, some later “white” strokes seemingly related to the architecture of the village seem to float among the vegetation (fig. 1.35). This kind of incremental buildup leads to some compositional oddities or disjunctions, and some of the foreground structures and their relationships to adjacent architecture are ambiguous—for example, the light-brown, wedge-shaped form among the buildings at the lower right corner (fig. 1.36). The tree at the lower right edge seems to weave impossibly in front of and behind the forms behind it. Cezanne applied the white outlines on the roofs by working around the space occupied by its trunk, but a later stroke added near the chimneys was painted on top of the trunk; the upper branch then seems to ultimately disappear into foliage that is farther in the distance (fig. 1.37).
51
Figs. 1.35–1.37
Fig. 1.35
Detail of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75) showing an area where Cezanne worked back and forth between the buildings and the vegetation. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Fig. 1.36
Detail of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75) showing some ambiguous architectural forms. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Fig. 1.37
Detail of Cezanne’s Auvers, Panoramic View (1873–75) showing how Cezanne worked back and forth between the tree trunk and the roof and surrounding foliage. The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.422.
Painting tools: Brushes, including flat ferrule.52
Palette: Analysis indicates the presence of the following pigments: lead white, zinc-based pigment or extender, ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, emerald green,[69] viridian, yellow ochre, and vermillion.[70]53
Binding media: Oil (estimated).[71]54
Surface Finish
Varnish layer/media: The painting is currently unvarnished (see Conservation History below).55
Conservation History
The painting was lined with an aqueous adhesive before it entered the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection in 1933. The original tacking edges were left intact but are covered with brown paper tape.56
Jill Whitten surface cleaned the painting in 1993 to remove grime, and toned localized spots of discolored retouching in the sky.[72]57
In 2021 Allison Langley removed the discolored natural resin varnish. Residues of brown glue/paste, likely from the lining and the application of the brown tape along the edges, were also removed. A few small losses were filled and inpainted. The painting was left unvarnished.[73]58
Condition Summary
The painting is in very good condition overall. The canvas is lined with an aqueous adhesive. The original tacking margins are intact but are covered by brown paper tape. The canvas is stretched taut and in plane on what may be the original, or at least an early, stretcher. The paint surface has a slightly pressed appearance, especially in the foreground impasto, probably the result of the heat and pressure used in the lining process. Very fine, short cracks that follow the canvas threads are visible in passages of exposed ground and thin paint application. There are also some fine cracks localized in areas of impasto and thickly layered paint. There are a few small, scattered losses and associated retouching in the sky and in the lower left corner. Scattered tiny, circular marks and disrupted rings of paint, sometimes accompanied by wrinkling of the paint around the circumference, are visible on the paint surface. The cause is unclear but may be related to glue splatters that dried and contracted on the surface during the early lining treatment. These areas appear to be stable. The painting is currently unvarnished.
Kim Muir with Giovanni Verri
59
Undated
Inscription:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: DR: 11906 (fig. 1.38)
104
Fig. 1.38
Inscription, cat. 1.
Inscription:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: P[h] 9603 (fig. 1.39)
105
Fig. 1.39
Inscription, cat. 1.
Number:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: 33 (fig. 1.40)
106
Fig. 1.40
Number, cat. 1.
Inscription:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: [illegible] 52 [crossed out] (fig. 1.41)
107
Fig. 1.41
Number, cat. 1.
Label:
Location: stretcher
Method: printed label with handwritten script
Content: PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM OF ART / FAIRMOUNT, PHILADELPHIA / ARTIST Paul Cézanne / [TITLE?] Auvers-sur-Oise, Village Panorama / INSURANCE VALUE / SALES VALUE / LENDER The Art Institute of Chicago / ADDRESS OF LENDER Chicago, Illinois / Penn Mus. Form / 33.422 (fig. 1.42)
108
Fig. 1.42
Label, cat. 1.
Label:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script on printed label
Content: Cézanne No. 4703 / Auvers sur Oise / vue panoramique [du?] / village, (around / 1877) m[torn] (fig. 1.43)
109
Fig. 1.43
Label, cat. 1.
Number:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: 1[or 7?]06.32 [crossed out] (fig. 1.44)
110
Fig. 1.44
Number, cat. 1.
Number:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: 33.4 (fig. 1.45)
111
Fig. 1.45
Number, cat. 1.
Number:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: R5300 (fig. 1.46)
112
Fig. 1.46
Number, cat. 1.
Number:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: [?]7 (fig. 1.47)
113
Fig. 1.47
Number, cat. 1.
Inscription:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: [?] (fig. 1.48)
114
Fig. 1.48
Inscription, cat. 1.
Label:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script
Content: Cézanne – no 11906 / auvers/oise (Vue / panoramique du village) (fig. 1.49)
115
Fig. 1.49
Label, cat. 1.
Inscription:
Location: backing board
Method: handwritten script
Content: 33.422 / Cézanne: Auvers Village Panorama (fig. 1.50)
116
Fig. 1.50
Inscription, cat. 1.
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: typewritten script on printed label
Content: THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO / artist Paul Cezanne / title Auvers-Sur-Oise Village Panorama / medium oil on canvas / credit / acc. # 1933.422 (fig. 1.51)
117
Fig. 1.51
Label, cat. 1.
Pre-1980
Stamp:
Location: stretcher (in two places: top and bottom of vertical crossbar)
Method: stamp or stencil
Content: 25w (fig. 1.52)
118
Fig. 1.52
Stamp, cat. 1.
Label:
Location: stretcher
Method: handwritten script on printed label with green ink inventory stamp (2 times)
Content: THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO / CHICAGO ILLINOIS 60603, U.S.A. / TO Cézanne, Paul / Auvers: Village Panorama / 1933.422 / [Ink stamp:] Inventory – 1980 – 1981 (fig. 1.53)
119
Fig. 1.53
Label, cat. 1.
Post-1980
Stamp:
Location: stretcher
Method: green ink stamp
Content: Inventory – 1980 – 1981 (fig. 1.54)
120
Fig. 1.54
Stamp, cat. 1.
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: CÉZANNE TO VAN GOGH / The Collection of Doctor Gachet / The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / May 25–August 15, 1999 (fig. 1.55)
121
Fig. 1.55
Label, cat. 1.
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro 1865 - 1885 / Venue(s): The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Los Angeles County Museum of Art / Musée d’Orsay / Lender: The Art Institute of Chicago / Artist: Paul Cézanne / Title/Date: Auvers-sur-Oise, Panoramic View, c. 1875-76 / Medium: Oil on canvas / Museum No.: 2005.144 [sic] / The Museum of Modern Art / 11 West 53rd Street, New York, New York 10019 (fig. 1.56)
122
Fig. 1.56
Label, cat. 1.
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: PIONEERING MODERN PAINTING: CÉZANNE AND PISSARRO / Paul Cézanne, Auvers-sur-Oise, Panoramic View. 1873-75 / Museum No. 2005.144 / Lender: The Art Institute of Chicago / The Museum of Modern Art / 11 West 53rd Street, New York, New York 10019 (fig. 1.57)
123
Fig. 1.57
Label, cat. 1.
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART / CÉZANNE EXHIBITION / May 30, 1996 – September 1, 1996 / Lender: The Art Institute of Chicago / Cat. No.:31 (Lender No.:1933.422) / Title: PANORAMIC VIEW OF AUVERS-SUR-OISE / Crate No.:85 (fig. 1.58)
124
Fig. 1.58
Label, cat. 1.
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: rmn [logo] / Grandpalais / “Cézanne et Paris” au Musée du Luxembourg / Du 10 octobre 2011 au 26 février 2012 / 41 / Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago / Paul Cézanne, Vue panoramique d’Auvers / Huile sur toile / 1933.422 (fig. 1.59)
125
Fig. 1.59
Label, cat. 1.
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: Tate Gallery Millbank London SW1P 4RG Tel: 071-887 8000 Fax: 071-887 8007 / Cézanne (8 February – 28 April 1996) / Cat.no: 31 / View of Auvers-sur-Oise 1873 / Oil on canvas 65.2 × 81.3 / The Art Institute of Chicago. Mr and Mrs Lewis Coburn / Collection (fig. 1.60)
126
Fig. 1.60
Label, cat. 1.
Label:
Location: frame
Method: printed label
Content: Arnold Wiggins & Sons / Limited / 4 Bury Street / St. James’s / London SW1 / Picture Frame Makers / Carvers and Gilders / [crest] BY APPOINTMENT TO H.M. QUEEN ELIZABETH II / PICTURE FRAME MAKERS / [crest] BY APPOINTMENT TO H.M. QUEEN ELIZABETH / THE QUEEN MOTHER / PICTURE FRAME MAKERS (fig. 1.61)
127
Fig. 1.61
Label, cat. 1.
- For a detailed chronology of all Cezanne’s stays in Auvers, see Denis Coutagne, “La chronologie des séjours de Cézanne à Auvers/Pontoise,” Société Paul Cezanne, Aug. 27, 2013, https://www.societe-cezanne.fr/2013/08/27/la-chronologie-des-sejours-de-cezanne-a-auverspontoise/.
- On the chronology of this painting, see Walter Feilchenfeldt, Jayne Warman, and David Nash, eds., The Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings of Paul Cezanne: An Online Catalogue Raisonné, https://www.cezannecatalogue.com, accessed June 1, 2025, no. 83 (hereafter FWN).
- On the relationship between the two painters around this time, see Joachim Pissarro, Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro, 1865–1885, exh. cat. (Museum of Modern Art, 2005), 41–59.
- Pissarro to Guillemet, Sept. 3, 1872, in Correspondance de Camille Pissarro, vol. 1, 1865–1885, ed. Janine Bailly-Herzberg (Presses Universitaires de France, 1991), 77: “Notre Cézanne nous donne des espérances et j’ai vu et j’ai chez moi une peinture d’une vigueur, d’une force remarquable. Si, comme je l’espère, il reste quelque temps à Auvers où il va demeurer, il étonnera bien des artistes qui se sont hâtés trop tôt de le condemner.” Pissarro subsequently wrote to the art critic Théodore Duret on Dec. 8, 1873, “Dès le moment que vous cherchez des moutons à cinq pattes, je crois que Cézanne pourra vous satisfaire, car il a des études fort étranges et vues d’une façon unique.” Pissarro, Correspondance, 1:88.
- Cezanne told Maurice Denis of his technique at this time, “Je cherche toujours à peindre en pleine pâte comme Manet, en donnant la forme avec le pinceau.” Cezanne quoted in Maurice Denis, Théories 1890–1910: Du Symbolisme et de Gauguin vers un nouvel ordre Classique (L’Occident, 1913), 249.
- Paul Gachet, Lettres impressionnistes au Dr Gachet et à Murer (Grasset, 1957), 53–54.
- This aspect of their relationship is reflected in the letter Cezanne wrote Pissarro on Dec. 11, 1872, from the older painter’s house in Pontoise, in which he states that he will stay the night there because he missed the train home. See Cezanne to Pissarro, Dec. 11, 1872, in Paul Cézanne: Correspondance, ed. John Rewald (Grasset, 1978), 142. See also Cezanne to Pissarro, June 24, 1874, in Cezanne, Correspondance, 147. A more tangible proof of Cezanne’s debt to Pissarro is that he gave him a rare signed painting, Entrée de ferme, rue Rémy, à Auvers-sur-Oise (FWN 76), dated “’73.” See Robert William Ratcliffe, “Cézanne’s Working Methods and Their Theoretical Background” (PhD diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1960), 241.
- Lucien Pissarro to Paul-Émile Pissarro, undated (1912), in Anne Thorold, ed., Artists, Writers, Politics: Camille Pissarro and His Friends, exh. cat. (Ashmolean Museum, 1980), 8–9: “A cette époque Cézanne habitait donc Auvers et il faisait tous les jours les 3 Kil. à pied pour venir travailler avec papa—il y avait des théories sans fin—Je me rappelle qu’un jour ils avaient fait venir de Paris des couteaux à palette spéciaux pour faire des études au couteau—plusieurs tableaux des deux peintres existent faites à cette époque les motifs et l’exécution sont forcément similaires puisqu’ils recherchaient les mêmes choses avec les mêmes instruments et les mêmes motifs.”
- Paul Gachet, Deux amis des impressionists: Le Docteur Gachet et Murer (Musées Nationaux, 1956), 53. It is now 78, rue Gachet.
- On Gachet’s activity as an artist and patron, see Gachet, Deux amis, 1–141; Anne Distel and Susan Alyson Stein, Cézanne to Van Gogh: The Collection of Doctor Gachet, exh. cat. (Metropolitan Museum of Art; Harry N. Abrams, 1999), 3–26, 35–103, 159–75, 185–255.
- See Gachet, Deux amis, 28.
- On Pissarro’s relationship with Gachet, see Distel and Stein, Cézanne to Van Gogh, 6–7, 134–35; and Pissarro, Correspondance, 1:72–73, 81–84, 86–87, 89, 92–93. On Gachet’s own etchings, see Distel and Stein, Cézanne to Van Gogh, 144–47; and Paul Gachet, Paul van Ryssel: Le Docteur Gachet graveur (Les Beaux Arts, [1954]).
- See Gachet, Deux amis, 57. See also Gachet, Deux amis, 55; Distel and Stein, Cézanne to Van Gogh, 61–63, for the suggestion that Gachet did not install this press until after 1875; Paul Gachet, Cézanne à Auvers: Cézanne graveur (Les Beaux Arts, 1952); and Jean Cherpin, L’œuvre gravé de Cézanne (Arts et Livres de Provence, 1972), 28–38.
- See Gachet, Deux amis, 55: “Sur son [Cezanne’s] conseil, le grand châssis qu’on voit sur le versant sud du toit dans la Maison du Dr Gachet, du Musée de Bâle, est déplacé et posé au nord. Le ‘grenier’ s’éclaire alors d’une bonne lumière et Cézanne, qui n’en a pas où il habite, y vient parfois travailler.”
- The three paintings of Dr. Gachet’s house are FWN 70, 71, 75. Gachet, Deux amis, 56: “Les fleurs naturelles qu’il affectionne pour leur coloration lui indiquent la voie à suivre: le Bouquet de Dahlias … et les autres de même série s’éclaircissent de plus en plus, de même que les trois Maison du Dr Gachet et le Panorama (Auvers) … Gachet suggère—pour compenser les lenteurs du métier de Cézanne—de prendre des toiles de plus petit format.”
- Paul Gachet, Collection du Dr. Gachet, vol. 2, Cézanne, peintures, aquarelles, pastels, dessins, 1928, Paul Ferdinand Gachet and Paul Louis Gachet Papers [t8b6cwdm], Wildenstein Plattner Institute, https://digitalprojects.wpi.art/archive/search/detail?id=125659-collection-du-dr-gachet-tome-ii-cezanne-peintu&media=11967184, pl. 4 (as Panorama, 1873): “Cézanne, pour le peindre était grimpé sur le coteau, en haut de la Chérielle, un des points culminants et, faisant face à l’est, dominait, à droite, le quartier de Four, et, devant lui, ceux des Rémys et des Vessenots, au-dessus desquels l’autre versant de la vallée de l’Oise profile les hauteurs de La Bonneville, de Méry, jusqu’à Bessancourt, Frépillon, Sognoles, etc. … un véritable panomara [sic]! … “Ainsi, en bas à droite, les trois toits de tuiles brunes, bordés de solins blanchâtres, les deux toits à la suite, couverts d’ardoises bleu-violacé, le premier avec cheminées roses, sont—vus par derrière—les bâtiments de la ferme de Four. … “Presque au milieu de la toile, une cheminée d’usine, celle d’une ancienne féculerie, située aux Vessenots, dans le clos du Sanglier ou clos Watteau. … “Plus bas, sur la gauche, la Maison du pendu, … et, tout en haut, la maison Gachet, un peu trop élancée, mais bien reconnaissable à son toit à quatre pentes, couvert de tuiles brunes; avec son unique fenêtre à l’ouest.”
- The gable is not visible in the etching Gachet made of the same subject from a slightly closer viewpoint in 1873, La Maison du pendu, chemin creux à Auvers.
- For the catalogue, see Ruth Berson, The New Painting: Impressionism 1874–1886; Documentation, vol. 1, Reviews (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1996), 5. The house’s name probably refers to an owner with the Breton surname Pen’du rather than a hanged man (pendu), as Cezanne implied when he used this motif as a cartouche in the etched portrait he made of Guillaumin in 1873; see Cherpin, L’œuvre gravé de Cézanne, 2.
- See Richard R. Brettell et al., A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape, exh. cat. (Harry N. Abrams, 1984), 190.
- See Brettell et al., A Day in the Country, 190.
- The GPS coordinates of the viewpoint are N 49°4′16″ E 2°8′42″. See also Alain Mothe, “1872–1882: Cézanne à Auvers-sur-Oise et Pontoise,” in Alain Mothe et al., Cézanne à Auvers-sur-Oise (Valhermeil, 2006), 42, and the map following 141; and Société Paul Cézanne, P. Cezanne à Paris et en Île-de-France (Crès, 2011), 46, 48.
- Gachet, Collection du Dr. Gachet, 2: no. 4.
- See Manzi, Joyant et Cie, Exposition d’art moderne, exh. cat. (Manzi, Joyant et Cie, 1912), cat. 15.
- See Nicholas Green, The Spectacle of Nature: Landscape and Bourgeois Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Manchester University Press, 1990), esp. 2, 31, 44–97, 110, 120, 132, and 147.
- See Green, Spectacle of Nature, 147–49, 179.
- See Paul Smith, “Cézanne’s Maternal Landscape and Its Gender,” in Gendering Landscape Art, ed. Steven Adams and Anna Gruetzner Robins (Manchester University Press, 2000), 116–32, 211–15.
- Cezanne to Émile Zola, Oct. 19, 1866, in Cezanne, Correspondance, 123: “Ca représentera Marion et Valabrègue partant pout le motif (le paysage s’entend).”
- Cezanne to Émile Zola, May 24, 1883, in Cezanne, Correspondance, 211: “J’ai içi de beaux points de vue, mais ça ne fait pas tout à fait motif.” For more on Cezanne and “motif,” see cat. 6.
- See Xavier Prati, “Retour sur le motif,” in Musée Cantini, L’Estaque: Naissance du payage moderne 1870–1910, exh. cat. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux; Musée Cantini, 1994), 146.
- The sheet was probably cut in order to frame the drawing on the verso. Fabienne Ruppen, email message to author, Jan. 10, 2024. The drawing is said to be a “fragment of a volute,” or scroll, in Adrien Chappuis, Les dessins de Paul Cézanne au cabinet des Estampes du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bâle (Urs Graf, 1962), 69, no. 85; and Adrien Chappuis, The Drawings of Paul Cézanne (New York Graphic Society, 1973), 1:195, no. 741.
- The date of this drawing is unclear. It bears an “SM” watermark, indicating that it was manufactured at the paper mill operated at Saint-Mars-la-Brière. See Anita Haldemann, ed., The Hidden Cézanne: From Sketchbook to Canvas, exh. cat. (Kunstmuseum Basel; Prestel, 2017), 195, 275. This mill was taken over by Jules Vaissier in 1875, who manufactured “Michallet” paper there, but the different paper of Cezanne’s drawing may be earlier. Fabienne Ruppen, email message to author, July 22, 2024.
- See Richard Shiff, “Cézanne’s Physicality: The Politics of Touch,” in The Language of Art History, ed. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 132–48.
- Cezanne quoted in Joachim Gasquet, Cézanne (Bernheim-Jeune, 1921), 80.
- Cezanne quoted in Jules Borély, “Cézanne à Aix,” L’Art vivant, no. 37 (Jul. 1, 1926): 493: “Voyez, de cet arbre à nous il y a un espace, une atmosphère, je vous l’accorde; mais c’est ensuite ce tronc, palpable, résistant, ce corps.” On this remark and Cezanne’s interest in the palpability of the landscape, see Paul Smith, “Cézanne’s ‘Primitive’ Perspective, or The ‘View from Everywhere,’” Art Bulletin 95, no. 1 (Mar. 2013): 102–19.
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Cézanne’s Doubt,” in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, ed. Galen A. Johnson, trans. Michael B. Smith (Northwestern University Press, 1993), 64–66; and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (Routledge, 1996), 119.
- See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, ed. Claude Lefort, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Northwestern University Press, 1968), 58.
- Merleau-Ponty, Visible and the Invisible, xlvi, 128.
- Merleau-Ponty, Visible and the Invisible, 139, 249.
- On Pissarro’s use of a “screen” of trees to similar effect, see Rachel Ziady DeLue, “Pissarro, Landscape, and Tradition,” Art Bulletin 80, no. 4 (Dec. 1998): 724, 731.
- Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, 214. See also DeLue, “Pissarro,” 730–31.
- On Cezanne’s use of forms of oblique projection, see John Willats, Art and Representation: New Principles in the Analysis of Pictures (Princeton University Press, 1997), 47–48, 51, 275; John Willats, Making Sense of Children’s Drawings (Erlbaum, 2005), 197; and Smith, “Cézanne’s ‘Primitive’ Perspective,” 112–16.
- Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, 299–333.
- Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, 253, 263–64.
- Gachet, Deux amis, 56.
- On this phenomenon, see Hermann von Helmholtz, Optique physiologique, trans. Émile Javal and N. Th. Klein (Paris, 1867), 799.
- Gachet, Deux amis, 56: “Il lui arivait fréquemment de s’acharner, sur un tableau et de le mener d’une saison à l’autre, d’une année à l’autre, de telle sorte qu’un printemps 1873 devenait à la longue un effet de neige 1874.”
- Robert Ratcliffe made this observation in the Cézanne lectures he gave at the Courtauld Institute in the 1960s and 1970s.
- Thorold, Artists, Writers, Politics, 8.
- See Paul Smith, Painting, Science, and the Perception of Coloured Shadows: “The Most Beautiful Blue” (Routledge, 2021), 137–38.
- Cezanne quoted in Gasquet, Cézanne, 83: “Je vois. Par taches.” See also Émile Bernard, “Paul Cézanne,” L’Occident, no. 32 (July 1904): 23, for Cezanne’s remark: “Lire la nature, c’est la voir sous le voile de l’interprétation par taches colorées se succédant selon une loi d’harmonie.” Around 1904 Pissarro told Robert de la Villhervé, “Je ne vois que des taches”; cited in Lionello Venturi, Les archives de l’impressionnisme (Burt Franklin, 1968), 1:101. On color-patch vision in Cezanne’s circle, see Marius Roux, The Substance and the Shadow, ed. Paul Smith, trans. Dick Collins and Fiona Cox (Pennsylvania State University Press 2007), 20–21n48.
- Hippolyte Taine, De l’intelligence (Paris, 1870), 2:122.
- Taine, De l’intelligence, 2:120–21.
- Pissarro to Lucien Pissarro, Nov. 22, 1895, in Pissarro, Correspondance, 4:121: “Chacun gardait la seule chose qui compte, ‘sa sensation.’” Cited in Richard Shiff, Cézanne and the End of Impressionism: A Study of the Theory, Technique, and Critical Evaluation of Modern Art (University of Chicago Press, 1984), 26.
- See Henri-Charles Stock, “Le Salon par Stock,” Stock-Album, no. 3 (Mar. 20, 1870): n.p.; and Cezanne, Correspondance, 176, 186.
- Gustave Coquiot, Paul Cézanne (Paul Ollendorff, 1919), 61: “Un paysan d’Auvers-sur-Oise à ce mot: ‘Monsieur, j’ai vu bien souvent les tableaux de MM Cezanne et Pissarro. M. Pissarro, en travaillant, piquait (et mon paysan fait le geste) et M. Cezanne plaquait (autre geste).’” See Nancy Locke, “Piquer, Plaquer: Cézanne, Pissarro, and Palette-Knife Painting,” in A Companion to Impressionism, ed. André Dombrowski (Wiley Blackwell, 2021), 146–61.
- Lucien Pissarro quoted in Thorold, Artists, Writers, Politics, 8: “Ils ne continuèrent pas longtemps la peinture au couteau; et essayèrent la touche divisée c’est à ce moment, je crois, que Cézanne a commencé à peindre avec ses divisions verticales et que papa adoptait les pinceaux longs a peint en petites virgules minuscules.”
- I am grateful to Kim Muir for this observation.
- Cezanne to Pissarro, June 24, 1874, in Cezanne, Correspondance, 147: “Le directeur du Musée d’Aix … je lui disais … que vous remplaciez l’étude des tons le modèle [sic], et je tachais de lui fair comprendre sur nature.”
- Gachet, Lettres impressionnistes, 53–54.
- Félix Bracquemond, Du dessin et de la couleur (Paris, 1885), 41: “Ton juste résume en une seule expression l’idée du modelé et celle de la couleur, le mot ton ayant le double rôle de valeur et de coloration.” For a discussion of ton, see Paul Smith, “Vermilion, or Why Cézanne Took the Shine off Things,” Word and Image 26, no. 1 (Apr. 2020): 69–72.
- Cezanne quoted in Léo Larguier, Le dimanche avec Cézanne (L’Édition, 1925), 136: “Au fur et à mesure que l’on peint, l’on dessine. La justesse du ton donne à la fois la lumière et le modelé de l’objet. Plus la couleur s’harmonise, plus le dessin va se précisant.”
- Lucien Pissarro quoted in Thorold, Artists, Writers, Politics, 8: “Nous ne peignons pas une figure, nous faisons des Accords.” Pissarro himself told Robert de la Villehervé, “Le grand problème à résoudre, c’est de ramener tout, même les plus petits détails du tableau, à l’harmonie de l’emsemble, c’est à dire, à l’accord”; Pissarro quoted in Venturi, Archives, 1:101.
- This technique of “broken color” was recommended in Jean Désiré Régnier’s De la lumière et de la couleur chez les grands maîtres anciens of 1865. Cezanne owned a copy, although it is not known when he acquired it.
- Cezanne complained to Émile Bernard in 1904 about reflections from the trees around his studio; see Émile Bernard, “Souvenirs sur Paul Cézanne et lettres inédites,” Mercure de France 70, no. 249 (Oct. 1, 1907): 394. Cezanne also told Bernard, “Les contrastes et les rapports de tons, voilà le secret du dessin et du modelé.” See Bernard, “Souvenirs,” 400.
- The canvas fibers were not analyzed.
- See, for example, the chart of standard sizes available from Bourgeois Aîné in 1888, reproduced in David Bomford et al., Art in the Making: Impressionism, exh. cat. (National Gallery, London; Yale University Press, 1990), 46, fig. 31.
- Thread count and weave information were determined by Thread Count Automation Project software. See Don H. Johnson, “Thread Count Report: Paul Cézanne, Auvers, Panoramic View (FWN83/1933.422),” July 2019, /files/a59a24c7-1bde-45ad-adae-74d24564b5c3/Cez_1933-422_Auvers_tcr_FWN83.pdf.
- The ground composition was analyzed using scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX). For more detailed results and conditions used, see Kim Muir, “1933-422_Cezanne_Auvers_ARP_SEM_202212,” Dec. 6, 2022, on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
- Though the techniques used to analyze the pigments cannot discriminate between the two types of copper-arsenate pigments available in the nineteenth century—emerald green and Scheele’s green—the former is more likely, since the use of Scheele’s green is rare and emerald green has been confirmed in Cezanne’s paintings at other institutions. See Francesca Rosi et al., “A Non-Invasive XRF Study Supported by Multivariate Statistical Analysis and Reflectance FTIR to Assess the Composition of Modern Painting Materials,” Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy 71, no. 5 (2009): 1655–62, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.saa.2008.06.011; and Anya Shutova and Barbara Buckley, “Materials and Techniques: A Study of Cézanne’s Paintings in the Barnes Foundation,” in Cézanne in the Barnes Foundation, ed. André Dombrowski, Nancy Ireson, and Sylvie Patry (Rizzoli Electa, 2021), 31–57. However, recent investigations have further highlighted the complexities related to the identification of copper-arsenic compounds. See Leonardo Pantoja Munoz, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Revisiting the Synthesis, Characterisation, Degradation and the Intricate Relationship Between Scheele’s Green and Emerald Green,” Heritage Science 12, no. 94 (2024): https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-024-01192-7.
- The presence of the pigments was inferred using the following methods: lead white (SEM/EDX, XRF), zinc-based pigment or extender (SEM/EDX, XRF), ultramarine blue (SEM/EDX, XRF, HSI), cobalt blue (XRF, HSI), emerald green (SEM/EDX, XRF, HSI), viridian (SEM/EDX, XRF, HSI), yellow ochre (SEM/EDX, XRF, HSI), and vermillion (SEM/EDX, XRF, HSI). A barium-based painting material, possibly barium sulfate, was also used, likely as an extender (SEM/EDX, XRF). Analysis was carried out on selected areas and may not include all pigments present in the painting. See Giovanni Verri, “1933-422_Cezanne_Auvers_ARP_XRF-HSI_202403,” on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago; and Muir, “1933-422_Cezanne_Auvers_ARP_SEM_202212.”
- The binding medium was not analyzed. The estimation of an oil medium is based on visual examination, as well as on knowledge of Cezanne’s technique and published analyses of Cezanne’s paintings in other collections. See, for example, Charlotte Hale, “A Template for Experimentation: Cézanne’s Process and the Paintings of Hortense Fiquet,” in Dita Amory et al., Madame Cézanne, exh. cat. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014), 55; and Elisabeth Reissner, “Ways of Making: Practice and Innovation in Cézanne’s Paintings in the National Gallery,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 29 (2008): 10.
- See Jill Whitten, treatment report, Apr. 6, 1993, on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
- See Allison Langley, treatment report, Nov. 22, 2021, on file in the department of Conservation and Science, Art Institute of Chicago.
- The painting is included and illustrated in the typescript catalogue of Gachet’s collection produced by his son in 1928. See Gachet, Collection du Dr. Gachet, 2: no. 4. See also Distel and Stein, Cézanne to Van Gogh, 119–200, which refers to the 1928 typescript catalogue, for a summary of the published evidence. In an unpublished letter of Apr. 6, 1968, to Sandra L. Grung of the Art Institute of Chicago, John Rewald states that he believed that Gachet was the painting’s first owner since it was listed in the 1928 typescript catalogue, citing copies in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and in the possession of his friend Philippe Huisman. In all, Gachet acquired twenty-eight works by Cezanne directly from the artist, several of them made at Auvers. See FWN, https://www.cezannecatalogue.com/collections/entry.php?id=654. Like ten of the seventeen paintings which passed from Dr. Gachet to his son, Auvers, Panoramic View did not go to the Louvre; and like fifteen of those in the collection of the father, it is unsigned. Previously, it was thought that Auvers, Panoramic View had belonged to Victor Chocquet, and subsequently Georges Viau. Venturi asserted Chocquet’s and Viau’s ownership in the unpublished revised entry of his catalogue raisonné known to Rewald (see John Rewald, typescript and photocopied draft entries, Box 5, Catalogue raisonné: 221 Auvers, National Gallery of Art Archives, Washington, DC). Venturi also claimed Viau had been its owner in his (published) catalogue raisonné. See Lionello Venturi, Cézanne: Son art, son œuvre (Éditions Paul Rosenberg, 1936), 1:100, cat. 150. Rewald pointed out Venturi’s attribution in his own catalogue raisonné, which did not recognize Gachet’s ownership (despite one typescript draft entry dated Dec. 27, 1989, giving it to him). See John Rewald, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: A Catalogue Raisonné (Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 1:161, cat. 221. Venturi probably ascribed it to Viau because the painting was given this provenance in the catalogue of the 1921 Strölin sale on July 7, 1921. See Hôtel Drouot, Catalogue des tableaux modernes: Aquarelles—pastels—dessins composant la collection de M. Alfred Strölin (Hôtel Drouot, 1921), 5, no. 7. Rewald demonstrates that the painting in Viau’s collection was in fact FWN 134, which had once belonged to Chocquet (but not Viau, although both owned FWN 181). See John Rewald, “Chocquet and Cézanne,” in Studies in Impressionism, ed. Irene Gordon and Frances Weitzenhoffer (Thames and Hudson, 1985), 165. Rewald points out that the former work became confused with FWN 83 because Georges Rivière, in his monograph on Cezanne, called it “Vue générale d’Auvers” when he cited its appearance as no. 6 in Chocquet’s 1899 sale. See Georges Rivière, Le Maître Paul Cézanne (H. Floury, 1923), 199.
- See Distel and Stein, Cézanne to Van Gogh, 244; and “Vue d’Auvers-sur-Oise,” Musée d’Orsay, https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/vue-dauvers-sur-oise-216605.
- Ambroise Vollard lent the painting to the exhibition at Manzi, Joyant et Cie in 1912 (see Exhibition History), according to FWN; see https://www.cezannecatalogue.com/catalogue/entry.php?id=225. There is a photograph of the painting in the Vollard archives, annotated “Auvers 75” by Cezanne’s son; see “209 - Vue panoramique d’Auvers-sur-Oise, 1873–74,” Ambroise Vollard Records [VLD19-15], Wildenstein Plattner Institute, https://digitalprojects.wpi.art/archive/search/detail?id=123128-209-vue-panoramique-dauvers-sur-oise&media=11941297. Vollard bought two Cezannes and a Van Gogh from Gachet fils on Mar. 11, 1912; Jayne Warman, email message to author, Nov. 28, 2023.
- See Hôtel Drouot, Catalogue des tableaux modernes, 5, no. 7.
- See Art Institute of Chicago, Exhibition of the Mrs. L. L. Coburn Collection: Modern Paintings and Watercolors, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 1932), 10. Here “Choquet [sic]” was given as its first owner.
Entry by Paul Smith; Technical Report by Kim Muir with Giovanni Verri, “Cat. 1 Auvers, Panoramic View, 1873–75,” in Cezanne Paintings and Watercolors at the Art Institute of Chicago, ed. Gloria Groom and Kim Muir (Art Institute of Chicago, 2026), https://doi.org/10.53269/9780865593251/06. © 2026 by The Art Institute of Chicago. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
