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You have to have been in the loft at Jas de Bouffan and seen the hundreds of canvases piled up in there, mostly unfinished, dirty and battered, which he painted at that time, in order to understand the dogged, painful labor, the happy martyrdom that Cézanne underwent in order to take hold of his soul and of this land, in order as it were to fit them together in one interlocking whole, in the same gaze, the same craft.
Joachim Gasquet, Conversations avec Cézanne, Ed. Macula, 1978.
The estate belonged to the Cézanne family from 1859 to 1899. The manor house is set in a park with noble avenues of chestnut and plane trees, a pond with fountains decorated with lions and dolphins, plus a small orangery hidden behind a cascade of greenery. The ancient trees of the park and the cluster of six farm buildings, on the edge of the estate today, were to be some of Cézanne’s favorite subjects.
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