Art: Cezanne to Philadelphia

Until last week, Philadelphia’s museums showed no example of the work of Paul Cèzanne, famed French Impressionist. This embarrassing artistic deficiency was remedied when Manhattan’s Dealer Paul Rosenberg and Director Fiske Kimball of Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Museum of Art got together on a landscape painted in 1904, two years before the artist’s death. Dealer Rosenberg reasonably priced his Cèzanne at $40,000, knocked off 10% for spot cash.

Philadelphia’s $36,000 Cèzanne was a Pennsylvania echo of a world-wide interest in the strange recluse who did not perfect his art until he was 50, was still generally unknown at 60. This year the largest collection of Cèzanne’s work yet held was drawing crowds to the Musee de L’Orangerie in Paris. Here $2,000,000 worth of Cèzannes were gathered. Top price paid the artist in his lifetime was only a few hundred dollars.