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Following his death, the studio remained for many years untouched, uninhabited. Then in 1969 it became the property of the city of Aix-en-Provence, which restored it, all the while being careful to stay faithful to the master's spirit. Today, to enter is to walk in Cézanne's footsteps. The long shelf which runs along the wall still carries the painter's objects. The furniture is intact: a sweet table, a chest of drawers, the stove and a big wooden stepladder, the easel, a few chairs…

Along one side are big windows hung with yellow curtains through which shafts of light catch the dance of thousands of specks of dust.

As we leave the room, the floorboards creak under our feet. We want to turn back, to check whether on the chaise longue near the folding screen the painter isn't dozing, disturbed by our noise. But it's too late, the light from outside has already reclaimed us.

Atelier Cézanne
9 avenue Paul Cézanne
Aix-en-Provence
Tél. : 04 42 21 06 53
www.atelier-cezanne.com

a refuge. It was from here that he left to wander the hills when the fine weather inevitably tempted him to paint outdoors. It was to this place that he withdrew during the fall rains or the severity of winter, and where he painted "The Bathers" ("Les Grandes Baigneuses"). He surrounded himself with a multitude of familiar objects, which became as many subjects for sketches or still lives: earthenware pieces, bottles, vases, paper flowers, scarves, fruits, skulls, a little plaster heart…

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First of all, is a garden. Nature is omnipresent, almost savage. The trees appear to have been left to grow wild, threatening the little house's facade. This nature that Cézanne so loved to paint has been deliberately left to dominate the place. Only the studio resists, the studio of an artist who believed in the dominion of man over slanting walls, cracks, ruins, winding paths, the hills…

When Paul Cézanne had this studio built in the hills around Aix-en-Provence in 1902, he imagined it as a shelter, almost

The studio that Cézanne had built at the turn of the century in the heights of Aix-en-Provence still exists. Admittedly, houses have invaded the hills that back then were free of all construction. But the spirit of the painter can still be felt in the garden and within the walls of this historic site.

By Jean-Dominique Dalloz - Photos José Nicolas - January 8, 2012

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