{"id":181366,"date":"2026-08-08T14:56:36","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/?post_type=product&p=181366"},"modified":"2026-08-08T14:57:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:57:13","slug":"the-stove-in-the-studio","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/en\/paul-cezanne\/the-stove-in-the-studio\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul C\u00e9zanne \u2013 The Stove in the Studio"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Stove in the Studio \u2013 the canvases stand with their backs to the room<\/h2>\n

At the centre stands a small cast-iron stove on curved feet; through the grate open at the front the red embers show. On its plate squats a large dark pot with two handles and a lid, and behind it a black flue rises and leaves the upper edge. On the floor at the left stands a brown earthenware jug, at the right a dark table with a small bottle. All of it is sunk in a near-black ground. The original measures 41 \u00d7 30 cm<\/strong>, was made about 1865 and is held by the National Gallery<\/strong> in London (NG 6509). Here the painter\u2019s hand takes it over: a hand-painted painting on canvas<\/strong>, oil on canvas.<\/p>\n

What stands behind the stove<\/h3>\n

Behind the stove two canvases lean against the wall \u2013 and they are turned the wrong way round. What faces the viewer is not the paintings but their backs: the pale wooden stretcher frame and the diagonal braces at the corners, exactly as a canvas stands while nothing has yet been painted on it, or when it is set against a wall. The catalogue raisonn\u00e9 lists this expressly among the motifs as an unframed canvas<\/strong>. A work about a studio is thus one in which every other work shows only its reverse.<\/p>\n

The signature in red<\/h3>\n

At the lower right stands the signature: P. CEZANNE, written in red and large enough to catch the eye at once. The catalogue reproduces it to the letter, full stop included. With this painter that is not a matter of course \u2013 most of his canvases stay unsigned, so the red signature in the corner of this work is something worth looking at. Another early canvas from the same moment is Bread and Eggs<\/a>, likewise of 1865.<\/p>\n

From Zola\u2019s house into the national collection<\/h3>\n

The first owner the catalogue records is the novelist \u00c9mile Zola, at home in M\u00e9dan; after his death the canvas was sold in 1903 at the sale of the Zola collection at the H\u00f4tel Drouot in Paris, as number 112. The end of the road is unusual: in 1992 London received it from the Chester Beatty family under the procedure by which a work of art is handed to the state instead of a tax payment. The work was therefore not bought but given in place of money. The painter\u2019s face in later years is carried by the Self-Portrait with a Soft Hat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The work is almost single-coloured: black, brown and ochre, and between them only two light accents \u2013 the wooden stretcher and the embers in the stove. That is exactly why it reads better in a darker room than in a bright one: it stands well in a small study, beside a bookshelf, or in the kitchen of an old house. Because the canvas is upright, the smallest size begins at 41 \u00d7 60 cm and the largest measures 124 \u00d7 180 cm. Intermediate measurements we stretch to custom size<\/strong> on the stretcher frame, and how it will look framed is shown by our 3D rendering application<\/strong>. A jug like the one standing here on the floor returns in Fruit and a Jug on a Table<\/a> as well, among our art paintings on canvas<\/strong>.<\/p>\n