11 - The Hallowed Mentor: Cézanne by Numbers

Summary

Every great human being exerts a retroactive force: for his sake all of history is put on the scale again, and a thousand secrets of the past crawl out of their hiding places – into his sunshine.

Friedrich Nietzsche

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

According to the catalogue raisonné of his paintings, his lifetime production was 954. There are over 100 still lifes, of which about half feature apples. There are at least eighty Bathers, almost equally divided between male and female. There are over forty Mont Sainte-Victoires. To these should be added 645 watercolours and around 1,400 drawings, most of them from eighteen sketchbooks. Many of the sketchbooks have since been broken up and dispersed. There are extant fifty-six drawings of his wife, and no fewer than 136 of his son (often asleep). The catalogue raisonné of the drawings is the work of Adrien Chappuis, a connoisseur and collector – his collection of drawings the second-largest after the Kunstmuseum Basel. When Chappuis’ heirs decided to sell the remaining sixty or so drawings and watercolours from his estate, in 2002, the French state selected a single watercolour in return for an export licence for the remainder of the collection, despite the fact that there are hardly any Cézanne drawings in French national museums.

Immediately after his death, the dealers Vollard and Bernheim-Jeune jointly acquired twenty-nine ‘studies’ (oil paintings) for 213,000 francs and 187 watercolours for 62,000 francs from Cézanne's son, who received his first payment on 13 February 1907: cheques for 81,000 francs and 50,000 francs. Further payments followed on 15 March (16,000 francs), 4 April (8,000 francs), 15 June (8,000 francs) and 26 June (8,000 francs). Regular sales and regular payments continued thereafter. In 1912, for example, he received 40,000 francs for The Feast, otherwise known as The Orgy; in 1913, 100,000 francs for The Card Players (sold by Vollard to an American collector for ten times that figure in 1925). So dissipated his inheritance.