Cezanne's Painting Sells for $20.5 Million USD

Cezanne was a French post-impressionist painter who spent much of his time in Provence and painted many landscapes of the area. His painting “Vue sur L’Estaque et Le Château d’If”, is rare among Cezanne works as it is a vertical-format landscape.

With an estimate of between $12 & 18 million USD the painting reached a staggering $20,486,588.00 on auction day in London on the 4th February. The painting was featured in a sale of Impressionist and Modern Art works, which raised a total of $122.1 million.

Paul Cezanne moved to L’Estaque, a Provencal village west of Marseille, with his family due to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, and returned to the town several times. The painting was created during one of his last visits between 1883 and 1885. The artwork was bought in 1936 by collector Samuel Courtauld and remained in his private collection until now. Courtauld was a well know collector and supporter of the arts, being the founder of the Courtauld Gallery and Institute of Art in London.

The painting, “Vue sur L’Estaque et Le Château d’If”, captures a view from the hill above the town, with pine trees framing the fishing port’s terracotta rooftops and the Mediterranean Sea.

'I’ve rented a small house with a garden in L’Estaque, just above the station at the foot of the hill, with the rocks and the pines behind me,' Cézanne wrote to Zola in 1883. 'I’m still busy with painting, there are some fine views here. Climbing up high when the sun sets, there’s a beautiful panorama down below of Marseille and the islands, all of it wrapped in the evening light to very decorative effect'. (quoted in A. Danchev, ed., The Letters of Paul Cézanne, Los Angeles, 2013, pp. 228-229)

You will see many works by Cezanne in the galleries and museums throughout Provence but you can also visit one of his studios where he spent the latter part of his career and his life, in Aix-en-Provence.