What We Know About the ‘Cézanne 2025’ Celebrations in Aix-en-Provence

Paul Cézanne was once summarily dismissed by a museum director as a “gribouillard de province” (a provincial scribbler). Hardly true—he showed at the Salon des Refusés in 1863 and Salon des Indépendants in 1901, and he hung around with Pissarro and Renoir.

Throughout most of next year, the bucolic southern French town of Aix-en-Provence, where the Post-Impressionist painter was born and died, is bringing the artist’s legacy to life with a series of events, exhibitions, restorations and re-openings summarily titled “Cézanne 2025.” The celebrations will include the major exhibition at Musée Granet, “Cézanne au Jas de Bouffan,” with iconic pieces from its own collection (Portrait of Zola, Portrait of Madame Cézanne and others) and from museums in Paris, New York, Tokyo and London, along with works from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection. There’s also “Aix et Cézanne” at Musée du Vieil-Aix, “L’expo des expos – Cézanne au Pavillon Vendôme en 1956 et 1961” at Musée du Pavillon de Vendôme and a special show for children, “La Petite Galerie Cézanne” at La Manufacture gallery.

During a panel introduction held at Musée d’Orsay in Paris last month, Musée Granet was likened to the pantheon of dedicated artist venues throughout the French territory: Musée Bonnard (in Cannet), Musée départemental Maurice Denis (in Saint-Germain-en-Laye) and Musée Gustave Courbet (in Ornans). Strictly speaking, the museum isn’t a shrine to Cézanne, but since its reopening in 2006, it has held several notable exhibitions of the artist’s work to acknowledge the geographical bond.

At the press conference, Michel Fraisset, the director of Aix en-Provence’s office of tourism, quoted Goethe: “Who wants to understand the poem… Must go to the land of poetry; Who wishes to understand the poet… Must go to the poet’s land.” In that spirit, discovering where the painter painted is a means of grasping his work more deeply.

The Jas de Bouffan—the Cézanne country house surrounded by almond trees, mulberry trees, olive trees and fifteen hectares of vineyards—was acquired by the artist’s father (Louis-Auguste, a banker) in 1859; he set up a studio for his son on the second floor, overhung by a large glass roof. The artist spent time there intermittently until 1899 when he was forced to sell the estate. Post-estate, he built a studio elsewhere in town as of 1902, which Aix-en-Provence also acquired. Although Cézanne divided his time between the south of France and Paris, Aix-en-Provence was a pillar of his oeuvre, from the light to the signature craggy landscape.

Here, Cézanne completed his first works at age 20, fragments of which have recently been discovered in the Grand Salon. He painted on the available walls, and those panels on plaster were transposed onto canvas after the painter’s death. But in 2023, new pieces, measuring five to six meters square, were uncovered. (An “original wipe” of Cézanne’s paintbrush on a wall serves as the museum’s logo.)

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Denis Coutagne, president of the Société Paul Cézanne, described this estate as a nexus of “savoir cézannien” and echoed that one has to visit the original context to understand the work, as it is “a center of gravity.” As part of “Cézanne 2025,” the Jas de Bouffan bastide will reopen to visitors in the summer with extensive restorations, a visitors’ center and an adjacent Cézanne research facility and archive. Notably, one of the paintings coming to the Musée Granet from the Musée d’Orsay is the famous Les Joueurs de cartes (The Card Players), a painting for which Cézanne had the peasants employed on the Jas de Bouffan estate pose.

Also reopening in 2025 after two years of renovations is Cézanne’s Les Lauves studio, where he painted from 1902 to his death in 1906, and there’s a new route leading to the Bibémus quarries, located toward Mount Sainte-Victoire (of which the artist created 36 paintings and 45 watercolors). The once tricky-to-traverse area is publicly accessible for direct convening with the artist’s source of inspiration via the Route Cézanne linking Aix-en-Provence to Le Tholonet, which has walking trails and new explanatory panels that show how the landscape of Aix-en-Provence inspired the artist.

Reservations for “Cézanne au Jas de Bouffan” at Musée Granet open this month.