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Rarely shown Cézanne watercolors exhibited at museumJennifer Greenstein Altmann Princeton NJ -- Sixteen watercolors by French master Paul Cézanne that are rarely shown because of their sensitivity to light will be exhibited at the University Art Museum starting this month. "Cézanne in Focus: Watercolors from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection" will illustrate the unique interplay between drawing and painting that is integral to understanding Cézanne's artistry.
More than 600 watercolors by Cézanne are currently in existence, "but very few museums or private collectors have such a large and outstanding group," said Laura Giles, the associate curator of prints and drawings at the museum and the curator for the show. The works are part of the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection, which has been on loan to the museum since 1976. The exhibit will be on view from Saturday, Oct. 19, until Sunday, Jan. 12. Cézanne's pure touches of colorThe watercolors span much of Cézanne's career, with the earliest painted around 1875 and the last done in 1906, the final year of his life. The works are predominantly landscapes, mostly of scenes in Provence, but there are also three still lifes and one depiction of a literary scene. "What appealed to him about watercolors was the way he could create pure touches of color to model the form," Giles said. Cézanne would apply patches of paint and then wait for them to dry, achieving a translucent effect. He would often depict the same scene again and again in his work, "trying to pin down what he saw and often frustrated by not getting it right," said Giles. The exhibit will show two watercolors side by side with oil paintings by Cézanne of the same subject matter. "Three Pears," a small still life showing pears in a bowl, demonstrates the way in which Cézanne went about capturing the shape and corporality of objects. "You really see the artist at work. You see his process more than in his paintings by and large and you're much more aware of the artist working out his perceptions," Giles said. The pears have a much greater physical presence than objects in his later work, such as "Still Life with Carafe, Bottle and Fruit," painted in the year of his death, in which the objects become more ephemeral. "Three Pears" attracted the attention of artists Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir when it was exhibited in 1895 at Cézanne's first one-man show. The two got into a bidding war over the watercolor and had to draw lots to see who would get to buy it. Degas prevailed. Three watercolors will be exhibited so that the back of the paper can be viewed as well because Cézanne sometimes did sketches or even watercolors on both sides of the page. The back of "Trees and Cistern in the Park of Chateau Noir" depicts a study of a female nude that relates to his late paintings of bathers. Some related Cézanne paintings and drawings from the Pearlman collection also will be shown in the exhibition, as well as a page from a Cézanne sketchbook on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There are 70 works in the Pearlman collection, primarily by Impressionist and early 20th-century artists, including masterpieces by Vincent Van Gogh, Degas and Paul Gauguin. The watercolors, last shown at the museum in 1992, are only exhibited about once every 10 years because many of the colorants used in the 19th century can fade when exposed to light. (The watercolors will be exhibited in a gallery that has no natural light, and will be lit at low light levels.)
The catalogSoon after she arrived at the museum in December 2000, Giles decided it was time not only to show the works again, but also to publish an exhibition catalog. The catalog is the first scholarly publication of these works and the first that goes into depth about conservation, paper and pigment in Cézanne's watercolors, according to Giles. "We believe it's a major contribution to the field of Cézanne scholarship," she said. Susan Taylor, the museum's director, envisioned this project as a collaboration between the Department of Art and Archaeology at the University and the art museum, exemplifying the unique opportunities for research in a university setting. Giles asked professor Carol Armstrong to identify graduate students in the department as contributors to the catalog. Working with Armstrong, who co-edited the catalog with Giles, these students Scott Allan, Peter Barberie, Heather Hole, William McManus, Mark Mitchell and Marta Weiss carried out original research on the watercolors that they incorporated into their extensive catalog entries. Two outside authors also worked on the catalog: Matthew Simms, an assistant professor of art history at Emory University, who was a Florence Gould Fellow at Princeton two years ago and is working on a book about Cézanne's work; and Faith Zieske, a conservator of works of art on paper at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and one of the leading experts on the papers and pigments Cézanne used for his watercolors. Zieske examined the watercolors with the graduate students using a microscope and ultraviolet light. She discovered that on some of them, Cézanne may have gone over the watercolor in spots with a graphite pencil. "He often revisited the picture, went back and forth with looking at it and painting on it," Zieske said. "In some cases he went back to the image with a graphite pencil, and may have gone back over that with watercolor. It was a long process. He really agonized over these images." Zieske also determined that one of the watercolors originally belonged in a sketchbook of Cézanne's that now resides at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She made the finding by noticing that the watercolor had a tack hole in the same location as the other pages of the sketchbook, which the artist may have hammered into the wall. Cézanne's son may have removed the watercolor from the sketchbook to sell. "I was looking at the watercolor under the microscope at Princeton and I suddenly shouted out, 'The hole! The hole!'" said Zieske, who spent a number of years working on the Cézanne Sketchbook II at the museum in Philadelphia. "It was just serendipity that I knew the hole." The hole had been filled in, but it could still be seen by a trained eye. The museum, which is free to visitors, is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Free tours of highlights from the collection are given every Saturday at 2 p.m. Events planned to complement showThe Cézanne exhibition will be accompanied by an auxiliary exhibition, gallery talks, lectures, a film and the performance of a chamber opera. Auxiliary exhibition•"Earth's Beauty Revealed: The 19th-Century European Landscape" is on display at the University Art Museum through Jan. 12. Gallery talks•Laura Giles, associate curator of prints and drawings at the University Art Museum, will speak about "Watercolors from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection" at 12:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 25, and at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 27, at the museum. •Scott Allan, a Ph.D. candidate in art and archaeology, will talk about "Cézanne in Focus" at 12:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 8, and at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 10, at the museum. •"Sketches, Studies, Pictures and Views: 19th-Century Landscape in Europe" will be the subject of a talk by Peter Barberie, a Ph.D. candidate in art and archaeology, at 12:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 6, and at 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8, at the museum. Lectures•Matthew Simms, assistant professor at Emory University, will give a lecture at 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19, in McCosh 50 on "Color and Drawing: Cézanne and After." A reception will follow. •The Department of Art and Archaeology is sponsoring a talk on "The Late Watercolors of Paul Cézanne" given by Kathryn Tuma, assistant curator at The Drawing Center in New York. The lecture is at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 5, in McCormick 101. Film•"In Search of Cézanne," directed by Allan Miller, will by shown at 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 1, in McCosh 10. The movie follows Martha Beck, a documentary filmmaker who knew little about Cézanne but was overwhelmed by his work. To discover the source of her obsession, she decided to make a film about the artist, traveling to France to visit his studio and many of the locations of his paintings, and interviewing scholars, artists and Phillip Cézanne, great-grandson of the painter. The film will be followed by a panel discussion with the director, art historian Mary Tompkins Lewis and museum preparator Calvin Brown. A reception as part of the museum's First Friday events will follow. Opera performance•"Cézanne's Doubt," a chamber opera by Daniel Rothman, will be performed at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 22, and Wednesday, Oct. 23, in Taplin Auditorium, Fine Hall. The opera is based on Cézanne's letters and one of the painter's favorite poems, Baudelaire's "Une Charogne." Tickets are $10 for general admission and free for Friends of the Princeton University Art Museum, faculty and students. For tickets, call 258-1742. For more information, call 258-7482 or visit the museum's Web site at http://www.princetonartmuseum.org. |
October 14, 2002 Contents Page one Inside Benefits update Sections The Bulletin is published weekly during the academic year, except during University breaks and exam weeks, by the Office of Communications. Second class postage paid at Princeton. Postmaster: Send address changes to Princeton Weekly Bulletin, Office of Communications, Princeton University, 22 Chambers St., Suite 201, Princeton, NJ 08542. Permission is given to adapt, reprint or excerpt material from the Bulletin for use in other media. Subscriptions. The Bulletin is distributed free to faculty, staff and students. Others may subscribe to the Bulletin for $28 for the academic year (half price for current Princeton parents and people over 65). Send a check to Office of Communications, Princeton University, 22 Chambers St., Suite 201, Princeton, NJ 08542. Deadline. In general, the copy deadline for each issue is the Friday 10 days in advance of the Monday cover date. The deadline for the Bulletin that covers Nov. 4-10 is Friday, Oct. 25. A complete publication schedule is available at deadlines or by calling (609) 258-3601. Editor: Ruth Stevens |
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