Bastide du Jas de Bouffan by Paul Cézanne

“Le Bassin du Jas de Bouffan” by Paul Cézanne

“Le Bassin du Jas de Bouffan” by Paul Cézanne depicts the pond at the Bastide du Jas de Bouffan which is a historic manor house in Aix-en-Provence, France.

The bastide was purchased by banker Louis-Auguste Cézanne, the father of famed painter Paul Cézanne, in 1859. In 1880, Paul Cézanne established a studio in the attic. After his father’s death, he lived in the manor with his mother.

Paul Cézanne created several paintings portraying the pool, gardens, and many of the available views from multiple different vantage points.

In this painting, the pool is shown in its idyllic form. The greenery provides the overall color scheme, and the harmony of the tones demonstrated his masterly grasp of color.

The architectural and sculptural elements include the lion of yellow sandstone and the dolphin flipping its tail up.

Cézanne included the action of the pool being filled with water from two pipes, which distorted the reflections with the ripples.

The landscape was painted from life, capturing the grey-blue tone of the sky, on that day with the green of Provence, and its yellow soil.

Jas de Bouffan. The Pond

Title: Jas de Bouffan. The Pond
Français: Le Bassin du Jas de Bouffan
Artist: Paul Cézanne
Year: 1876
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: Height: 46.1 cm (18.1 in); Width: 56.3 cm (22.1 in)
Genre: Landscape Art
Museum: Hermitage Museum

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“Jas de Bouffan house and farm” by Paul Cézanne

“Jas de Bouffan house and farm” by Paul Cézanne depicts an 18th-century homestead in Aix-en-Provence, where the artist spent much of his life. The color of the painting is applied in a transparent layer.

Provençal manor such as these was called a “bastide” and was built about 1750. Bastide is the local term for a manor house in Provence, in the south of France, located in the countryside or a village, and initially occupied by a wealthy farmer.

A bastide was more extensive and more elegant than a farmhouse and was square or rectangular, with a tile roof. The walls were constructed of fine ashlar-stone sometimes covered with stucco or whitewashed, and often built in a square around a courtyard.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, many of these “besides” were used as summer houses by wealthy citizens of Marseille and Paris. The bastide was surrounded by a private garden with ponds, fountains, and sculptures.

In this painting, Cézanne arranged the individual geometric parts of the building into solid malleable compositions. Volumes are not mediated by a linear layer, but rather by the arrangement of shapes.

“Jas de Bouffan house and farm” by Paul Cézanne

Title: Jas de Bouffan house and farm
French: Maison et ferme du Jas de Bouffan
Artist: Paul Cézanne
Year: 1885-1887
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: height 60.8 cm; width 73.8 cm
Genre: Landscape Art
Museum: National Gallery Prague

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“Trees and Houses Near the Jas de Bouffan” by Paul Cézanne

“Trees and Houses Near the Jas de Bouffan” by Paul Cézanne was painted “sur le motif,” directly from nature. Cézanne’s brush marks are lean and articulated, his palette of yellows and greens are simply expressed.

Cézanne experimented with the spatial relationships in nature, working from life or memory. The trees appear as a frieze against the recessive color, applied as though in watercolor, but actually in oil.

About the time of this painting, in 1886, there was a turning point for Cézanne when he married Hortense; he was 47. In that year also, Cézanne’s father died, leaving him the estate of Bastide du Jas de Bouffan

By 1888 the family was in the former manor, Jas de Bouffan, a substantial house and grounds with outbuildings, which afforded a new-found comfort.

Trees and Houses Near the Jas de Bouffan

Title: Trees and Houses Near the Jas de Bouffan
Artist: Paul Cézanne
Year: 1885–86
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 26 3/4 x 36 1/4 in. (67.9 x 92.1 cm)
Genre: Landscape Art
Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art

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“The Avenue at the Jas de Bouffan” by Paul Cézanne

“The Avenue at the Jas de Bouffan” by Paul Cézanne depicts an avenue of chestnut trees provided the motif for a series of paintings by Cézanne, of which this is the earliest.

It was painted after Cézanne’s Impressionist phase, mostly composed of compressed space, massive forms, and slab-like diagonal foliage made using a palette knife.

This work displayed the early appearance of various elements that were to characterize many of his later landscape art pieces.

The Avenue at the Jas de Bouffan

Title: The Avenue at the Jas de Bouffan
French: L’avenue au Jas de Bouffan
Artist: Paul Cézanne
Year: 1868
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: Height: 38.1 cm (15 in); Width: 46 cm (18.1 in)
Genre: Landscape Art
Museum: National Gallery, London

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“The Pool at the Jas de Bouffan” by Paul Cézanne

“The Pool at the Jas de Bouffan” by Paul Cézanne depicts the pool on Cézanne’s family’s estate, Jas de Bouffan, near Aix. Waterspouts flanked the pool in the shape of lions, one of which may be seen in this painting from behind.

Cézanne’s affection for the estate is reflected in the many views he painted of the property over a quarter-century. The road at the lower right, which was bordered with chestnut trees, is depicted in several of his compositions from the mid-1880s.

The road led from the back of the manor house to the landscaped gardens, and a washing trough is visible in the middle ground next to the pool.

The Pool at the Jas de Bouffan

Title: The Pool at the Jas de Bouffan
Artist: Paul Cézanne
Year: 1880s
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 25 1/2 x 31 7/8 in. (64.8 x 81 cm)
Genre: Landscape Art
Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art

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“The Neighborhood of Jas de Bouffan” by Paul Cézanne

“The Neighborhood of Jas de Bouffan” by Paul Cézanne depicts a large foreground tree at one side and a grouping of smaller trees at the other side, to frame a distant view in the center.

Paul Cézanne created about thirty-seven oils and sixteen watercolors of the Jas de Bouffan and its surroundings. In the mid- and late 1880s that Cézanne explored the many motifs offered by the manor and its grounds.

Cézanne’s idyllic period at Jas de Bouffan was temporary. From 1890 until his death, he was beset by troubling events, and he withdrew further into his painting, spending long periods as a virtual recluse.

His problems began with the onset of diabetes in 1890, destabilizing his personality to the point where relationships with others were again strained.

He traveled to Switzerland with his wife, Hortense, and his son, hoping to restore their relationship. Cézanne, however, on returning to Provence lived in separate living quarters to his wife.

Cézanne then moved in with his mother and sister and in 1891 he turned to Catholicism.

The Neighborhood of Jas de Bouffan

Title: The Neighborhood of Jas de Bouffan
Français: Environs du Jas de Bouffan.
Artist: Paul Cézanne
Year: 1885
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: Height: 65 cm (25.5 in); Width: 81 cm (31.8 in)
Genre: Landscape Art
Museum: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Cezanne in Provence

Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906) was a Post-Impressionist painter who laid the foundations in the transition from the 19th-century Impressionism to the 20th century’s Cubism.

Cézanne’s often repetitive, exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and recognizable. He used planes of color and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields.

Both Matisse and Picasso have remarked that Cézanne “is the father of us all.” Cézanne’s art is characterized by repetitive, exploratory small brushstrokes that build up to form complex color fields, demonstrating his intense study of his subjects.

Paul Cézanne

Name: Paul Cézanne
Born: 1839 – Aix-en-Provence, France
Died: 1906 (aged 67) – Aix-en-Provence, France
Nationality: French
Movement: Post-Impressionism
Notable works:
- The Card Players (Barnes Foundation)
- The Card Players (Courtauld Gallery)
- The Card Players (MET)
- Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory
- Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress
- Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair
- Bathers (The National Gallery, London)
- The Large Bathers (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
- Bathers by Paul Cézanne (Art Institute of Chicago)
- Bathers by Paul Cézanne (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC)
- “Mont Sainte-Victoire” Series
- Jas de Bouffan Series