Aix-en-Provence in the footsteps of Cézanne

In the elegant Mazarin district, this fine cultural space houses ten works by the master. In the late 1850s, Cézanne attended the drawing school at this former Musée des Beaux-Arts. A copy of a canvas painted there by the budding artist inaugurates the Cézanne collection.

The collection also includes a portrait of Zola, the painter's classmate at the Collège Bourbon, now the Collège Mignet, in the same street. The future writer once thanked his friend, who had defended him in the school playground, by offering him a basket of apples...

In 2025, to mark the ‘Year of Cézanne 2025’, the Musée Granet is organising a major exhibition entitled ‘Cézanne au Jas de Bouffan’.

Granet Museum

Cézanne painted Sainte-Victoire, the limestone mountain that dominates the Provençal sky, after having walked it extensively during his youth, with his friends Zola and Baille. It appears in 44 oil paintings and 43 watercolours!

In 1989, a devastating fire struck the Sainte-Victoire, to which the people of Aix are deeply attached. While the painter's favourite motif, long ignored by his city, went up in smoke, the event accelerated Cézanne's recognition in Provence.

In 1990, the Musée Granet organised an exhibition devoted to the painter and Sainte-Victoire.

Cézanne was inspired by the ochre palette and graphic lines of the Bibémus quarries, a rocky site hidden in the pine forest near Sainte-Victoire.

Quarried by the Romans to build Aquae Sextia, and then by the builders of the Mazarin district in the 17th century, the Bibémus quarries distil the poetry of old stone to nourish dreamy souls.

The stone cottage rented by Cézanne still boasts a sumptuous view over the surrounding hills and garrigue.

To coincide with the ‘Cézanne 2025’ event, new footpaths with explanatory panels have been laid out around the site.

Once located in the Aix countryside, the 18th-century mansion belonging to the Cézanne family saw Paul's talent blossom from the age of twenty. In Jas de Bouffan, on the walls of the main sitting room, he painted twelve works to convince his banker father of his artistic vocation! Three of these are now in the Musée d'Orsay.

The orangery and the avenue of chestnut trees feature in paintings by the artist, who lived here for some forty years during his stays in Provence.

Closed for renovation, the house will reopen its doors to the public on the occasion of the ‘Cézanne 2025’ event organised in Aix-en-Provence.

From 1902 until his death in 1906, Cézanne worked every day in this room bathed in light through a large glass roof, on the first floor of a bastidon he had built among the trees, on the heights north of the town of Aix-en-Provence.

Visitors are still overwhelmed by the emotion of seeing objects dear to the artist, such as Provençal earthenware, his studio smock and his hat.

The studio-museum carefully cultivates the artist's memory, with a shop and bookshop, and organises temporary exhibitions and cultural events. Also known as l'atelier des Lauves, it is one of the key places to visit as part of the ‘Cézanne 2025’ artistic programme.

Cézanne's studio

Hidden between the houses of a housing estate on the Lauves hill, the painters' plot is a wilderness with an exceptional view... of Sainte-Victoire. Cézanne only needed fifteen minutes to walk from his studio to this viewpoint and set up his easel in front of his favourite motif.

For the curious and the amateur artists who come here today to practise their brushstrokes, there are panels showing several of the Impressionist painter's works done here.

On 15 October 1906, just a few days before his death, a storm caught Cézanne on this hill, interrupting his tête-à-tête with Sainte-Victoire for ever.