Cézanne Thinking

One of these paintings
was to study the motif.
The other painting

is the end result
of thinking through, painting through,
the scene’s challenges.

If Cézanne ever
was ‘through’ with a scene. I think
he is still thinking.








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Both of those paintings are called, “Le Cabanon de Jourdan,” the top is watercolor, the bottom is oil. They are special not just because of their beauty, or because they represent Cézanne approaching the same motif in two different mediums using different techniques. They are special also because they are believed to have been painted in 1906, the year Cézanne died. These two painting are among the final works the artist created. Typically artists make watercolor sketches as preparation for a more involved oil rendering. But many artists, and certainly the impressionists, sometimes reversed the process and created watercolors based on oil compositions they felt were especially successful in one way or another. Cézanne, too, was an exceptional watercolor painter. He did not use traditional wash techniques but rather approached watercolor as something like a very fluid oil medium, where the touch of the brush stroke is almost always preserved on paper. In his later years his oil painting techniques began to be influenced by his watercolor work. Either of these two works may have been the study for the other. Each is remarkably beautiful in its own way. Since Cézanne left no journal we will never know the real back-story to these two paintings.

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