The Year of Cézanne: A Pilgrimage to Aix

Cézanne. Cézanne. Cézanne.

If you thought David Hockney dominated France’s art scene this summer, think again. Nothing—not even Hockney’s saturated pools—came close to the fervor unleashed in Aix-en-Provence, where the city declared 2025 “The Year of Cézanne.” What followed was less a simple exhibition and more a cultural siege. The campaign was everywhere: posters, press releases, and hashtags floated like confetti over Provence, turning Cézanne into a civic saint.

And this was not just another museum show. Aix turned its entire summer into a stage. The exhibition at Musée Granet, “Cézanne in Jas de Bouffan,” sold out weeks in advance; even the most determined flâneurs had to hunt for tickets. When I finally entered, the galleries were a tide of admirers—mostly retirees and group tours—proof that Cézanne, more than a century after his death, still commands his audience.

But the spectacle was about more than paintings. It marked the completion of a major restoration of Cézanne’s studio and the ambitious, years-long restoration project of his beloved family estate, Jas de Bouffan. For the first time in decades, the house’s doors reopened to the public, revealing rooms and spaces Cézanne himself walked through, his ghosts now joined by busloads of art pilgrims.

The Story, Retold

Let us step back two centuries. Paul Cézanne was born in 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, the son of Louis-Auguste Cézanne, a hatmaker-turned-banker, and Anne-Elisabeth-Honorine Aubert, then his father’s mistress (they married after Paul’s birth). Cézanne received a rigorous education, attended the École de dessin d’Aix, but, amusingly, never won the annual prize for drawing—his friend Émile Zola did, in 1857.

Obedient to paternal pressure, Cézanne enrolled in law school. Two years later, he abandoned law for art, moved to Paris with Zola, and began the career that would scandalize and eventually transform the art world.

In 1859, Louis-Auguste purchased Jas de Bouffan, a gracious 18th-century bastide on the outskirts of Aix. It became the family’s residence for four decades and Cézanne’s sanctuary. In its grand salon, he painted his first murals. Winters were spent in Paris; summers in Provence. By 1882, Cézanne returned to Aix for good, working in Jas de Bouffan on his still lifes, portraits, Bathers series, and his near-mystical views of Mont Sainte-Victoire.

His father even built him a studio on the top floor, with high windows and perfect northern light. Yet despite his love for the house, Cézanne was forced to sell it after his father’s death due to Napoleonic inheritance laws. With his share of the inheritance, he purchased land with an olive grove and, in 1901, built the Atelier des Lauves—a simple, purpose-built studio designed to accommodate large canvases. Here he painted until his death in 1906.

Both houses passed through several hands before becoming state-managed sites of pilgrimage for art lovers.

The Exhibition

Let us give credit where it is due: the exhibition was a monumental scholarly effort. The curators assembled an astonishing range of works—Bathers, still lifes, Mont Sainte-Victoire, portraits (early and late), and a dizzying number of self-portraits and a famous "Card Players"—drawn from major museums and private collections worldwide.

And yet, the experience was strangely monotonous. The repetition of themes—those endless Ja de Bouffans—dulled the sharpness of Cézanne’s genius. Even the celebrated Card Players, unveiled near the end, failed to deliver the promised crescendo. What was missing was a single masterpiece, a definitive work to anchor the show the way the Mona Lisa does at the Louvre.

The Musée Granet’s narrow but towering halls struggled under the weight of hundreds of visitors wielding audioguides. The crowding was oppressive, the rhythm of looking broken by the constant shuffle of tour groups. Still, the museum must have benefited enormously from the ticket revenue—a small consolation for those who queued in the summer heat.

The Pilgrimage

Visiting Cézanne’s sites felt almost monastic, though with the security of an airport. Armed police, barricades, timed entries—one felt closer to Alcatraz than to an artist’s sanctuary.

Jas de Bouffan lies far from Aix’s charming center, hidden in a sprawl of uninspiring modern buildings near a highway exit. There is no convenient parking, and walking back alone felt uneasy enough that I hailed an Uber. A shuttle bus for a nominal fee would be a welcome addition.

The Atelier des Lauves is equally remote, perched on a steep hill in another rather bleak neighborhood, with the nearest parking a ten-minute bus ride away. Here, too, a shuttle could transform the experience.

Final Thoughts

This is an exhibition for those who already know Cézanne, who can read through the repetition and assemble the story in their minds. To truly appreciate it, one must first see Jas de Bouffan and the Atelier des Lauves—the living context that makes the paintings vibrate.

It is a beautifully researched, well-funded show with a publicity campaign that bordered on aggressive. But its excess left me longing for one thing Cézanne himself might have appreciated: restraint.

If you still decide to make the pilgrimage, extend it just a little further: the Fondation Vasarely is a short trip away and a revelation in its own right. Its monumental geometric architecture is worth the visit alone, but right now it hosts a particularly charming temporary exhibition dedicated to Vasarely’s wife and muse, Claire, a delicate counterpoint to all that Cézannian gravity.

Foundation Vasarely in Aix in Provence

Portrait of Claire Vasarely by Foujita