{"id":183410,"date":"2026-08-09T17:18:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T15:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/?post_type=product&p=183410"},"modified":"2026-08-09T17:18:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T15:18:47","slug":"the-red-rock","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/en\/paul-cezanne\/the-red-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul C\u00e9zanne \u2013 The Red Rock"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Red Rock \u2013 a canvas with only three owners<\/h2>\n

The canvas is upright, which is unusual for a landscape. From the upper right corner a large red-orange rock face comes down, smooth and almost without detail, like a curtain of stone. At the left and below stands dense green growth \u2013 pine trunks, branches and low foliage \u2013 and between the two only narrow light gaps remain. There is almost no sky. This hand-painted painting on canvas<\/strong> reproduces C\u00e9zanne\u2019s work of about 1895, which measures 91 \u00d7 66 centimetres in the original and is held by the Mus\u00e9e de l\u2019Orangerie<\/strong> in Paris under the number RF 1960-14.<\/p>\n

Three owners in a hundred years<\/h3>\n

The provenance of this canvas is extraordinarily short. The first known owner was the dealer Ambroise Vollard<\/strong> in Paris, who kept it for decades. In 1936 the work went to Madame Jean Walter, who had earlier been Madame Paul Guillaume \u2013 the collection in which the canvas now sits is named after both husbands. In 1960 that collection passed to the Mus\u00e9e de l\u2019Orangerie<\/strong>. Three holders, and between the first and the last the work travelled the whole way from a dealer\u2019s shelf into a state museum without ever going through an auction.<\/p>\n

One hundred and fifty francs, and Vollard\u2019s own exhibition<\/h3>\n

In Vollard\u2019s stockbook the canvas carries the number 3865 and the price of 150 francs. In November 1933 Vollard sent it to New York: the Knoedler gallery mounted an exhibition titled Paintings from the Ambroise Vollard Collection, XIX-XX Centuries<\/em>, in which the work was number 12. The show was therefore a presentation of the dealer\u2019s own holdings rather than a museum selection, and from there it travelled on to Detroit, to the Arts and Crafts Club. In that catalogue it was dated 1897.<\/p>\n

An exhibition in aid of breastfeeding<\/h3>\n

In February and March 1939 the canvas was in Paris at Paul Rosenberg\u2019s, in the exhibition for the centenary of the painter\u2019s birth. Its full title says what it was for: Exposition C\u00e9zanne (1839-1906), organis\u00e9e \u00e0 l\u2019occasion de son centenaire au profit de l\u2019\u0153uvre de l\u2019allaitement maternel<\/em> \u2013 in aid of the society for maternal breastfeeding. The work was number 32, lent by Vollard, and in that catalogue it was dated 1900. Later it was twice at the Orangerie: in 1966 in the exhibition of the Jean Walter \u2013 Paul Guillaume collection as number 15, and in 1974 in the show of C\u00e9zanne\u2019s works from the national museums.<\/p>\n

The rock as a single surface<\/h3>\n

The most unusual thing about this canvas is how little is painted on the rock. The red-orange wall is almost one unified plane of colour, without cracks, without shadows and without the details that would give it the structure of stone; only slight shifts of tone and a few vertical strokes are visible. The green beside it, by contrast, is dense and busy, made of dozens of short touches. Because of this the rock does not read as a distant wall but as a surface hanging directly in front of the viewer \u2013 and that is exactly what gives the upright format its point. The place the catalogue names is the Bib\u00e9mus quarry near Aix.<\/p>\n

What Vollard entered beside number 3865<\/h3>\n

The dealer\u2019s description is short and unusually precise: huile; paysage en hauteur \u00e0 droite grand pan rouge<\/em> \u2013 oil; upright landscape, at the right a large red panel. Beside it stand the measurement 92 \u00d7 65 centimetres and the price of 150 francs. Vollard therefore described not the subject but the construction of the work: the format, the side and the plane. The catalogue raisonn\u00e9 likewise gives this work a single heading among the natural motifs \u2013 rocks<\/em> \u2013 which for a landscape is very little indeed.<\/p>\n

How the collection reached the Orangerie<\/h3>\n

The Jean Walter \u2013 Paul Guillaume collection passed to the Mus\u00e9e de l\u2019Orangerie in 1960, and that year stands in this canvas\u2019s inventory number: RF 1960-14. The museum did not assemble the collection itself; it received it whole, and with it the relations between the works as a private taste had settled them. So the canvas is on view today in a house where it hangs as part of a completed collection rather than as a single purchase.<\/p>\n

An upright landscape is a rarity and useful for exactly that reason: it fits narrow walls, between a door and a window or in a hallway, where a horizontal canvas would have no room. We paint it in fifteen sizes, from 40 \u00d7 55 to 131 \u00d7 180 centimetres, intermediate measurements we stretch on a made-to-measure stretcher, and how it will look in the chosen frame is shown in advance by our 3D application<\/strong>. From the same country come The Bib\u00e9mus Quarry<\/a> and Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from Bib\u00e9mus<\/a>, while a wider view is offered by The Bay of Marseille, Seen from L\u2019Estaque<\/a>.<\/p>\n