Why this French city just trademarked 'Cezanne'.
- Amateur Art Critique
- Jul 13
- 3 min read
Why This French City Just Trademarked ‘Cézanne’
The move comes amid a year-long celebration of the artist's life and legacy.
3 days ago
Anyone lucky enough to summer in Aix-en-Provence will have observed how its panoramic views of orange rooftops and windswept pine trees, crowned by distant mountains, immediately calls to mind the landscape paintings for which Paul Cézanne is best known. The feted Post-Impressionist was born in Aix in 1839 and by the time he died there, in 1906, he was firmly established as a founding father of modern art.
This year, the leafy Mediterranean refuge is pulling out all the stops to highlight its association with art historical royalty. For starters, Aix’s tourist office has taken the liberty of trademarking his full name and the phrase “Cézanne chez lui,” meaning “Cézanne at home.”
Paul Cézanne in his studio in Les Lauves, 1904 by Émile Bernard. Photo: Fine Art Images/ Heritage Images via Getty Images.
The phrase will adorn merchandise associated with “Cézanne 2025,” a busy program of events taking place across the region this summer. The city has splashed out an impressive €30 million ($35 million) for these lavish celebrations, which are the grand culmination of some significant restoration projects. The investment should pay off. The last year of Cézanne, held to celebrate the centenary of his death in 2006, saw a wave of tourism that boosted revenue by some €65 million.
The principal highlight is a monumental retrospective featuring 130 drawings, watercolors, and paintings by Cézanne that just opened at Aix’s art museum Musée Granet. “Cezanne au Jas de Bouffan,” on view through October 12, centers on the artist’s family home of 40 years, the Bastide du Jas de Bouffan. This cherished house was a source of creative inspiration where Cézanne was able to relax, admire Provençal landscapes, and devise new approaches to painting.
The show will bring home plenty of significant works that have made their way across the globe, with prized loans coming from museums like the Courtauld Gallery in London, Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Prague’s National Gallery, the Kunstmuseum Bern, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Grand Salon recreation in the “Cezanne au Jas de Bouffan” exhibition at the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence, southern France. Photo: Christophe Simon/ AFP via Getty Images.
Visitors won’t just have to imagine life at Jas de Bouffan. Following its recent conservation, they will once again be able to step back in time and visit the stately country home, which is full of evidence of the artist’s early development. Now too, they will be able to visit his very first studio.
In the Grand Salon, visitors can explore the paintings Cézanne made directly onto the walls while he was still in his twenties. Fragments of one mural were only recently discovered during conservation work last year. The others were removed and sold off by previous owners of the building but they have now been reunited at the Musée Granet for a one-off reconstruction of the Grand Salon, as it would have looked in Cézanne’s day. Among the canvases are women in elegant, antique dress bearing bowls of fruit and bouquets of flowers.
Ker-Xavier Roussel’s photograph of Paul Cézanne painting at Les Lauves, 1906. Photo by by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images via Getty Images.
Mega-fans will also be delighted to check out Cézanne’s last studio for themselves. Known as the Atelier des Lauves, the the artist discovered the building by chance while he was out painting one day. In 1901, he converted it into a spacious workshop filled with natural light and, after he died, the structure was frozen in time. Since the 1950s, this relic of Cézanne’s intimate creative life has been a public museum and over the past few years it has been lovingly restored and reopened anew.
“Cezanne au Jas de Bouffan” is on view at the Musée Granet at Aix-en-Provence through October 12.
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