A previously hidden painting by French artist Paul Cézanne has been discovered at his childhood home in Aix-en-Provence in the South of France, according to the city’s municipality.
Aix mayor Sophie Joissains said on social media: “Cézanne has not stopped surprising us.” She revealed that the unexpected art finding was made by renovators, when they removed some wallpaper from the main living room (Grand Salon) walls.
The Cézanne painting discovery, over 117 years since the iconic painter’s death, was made six months ago (August 2023) at the family home, Bastide du Jas de Bouffan (pictured above), but has only just been announced.
The mayor said the mural fragments include a sky, a boat mast and a port entrance, but more investigation will be required. She said the painting was from his youth, and had not been discovered when a previous inventory was done of nine paintings on the same walls (created between 1859 and 1869). Those had been transferred onto canvases and sent to museums in France and abroad.
According to The Art Newspaper, this new discovery “offers the city of Aix-en-Provence, which has for a long time not held a single painting by its local hero, its first Cézanne treasure”. (Cézanne’s masterpieces are dotted around the world at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, and the National Gallery in London, and elsewhere.)
2025 Tribute to Paul Cézanne
The restoration of the 12.3 acre bastide property is in preparation for next year’s tribute to Cézanne which will celebrate the artist and his connection to Aix-en-Provence – where he was both born (1839) and died (1906). Even whilst living in Paris and Estaque, Cézanne regularly returned to his beloved Aix, and spent the last years of his life in or near the town. Some of the Post-Impressionist’s most well known works include the series of paintings he made from his studio in Les Lauves in Aix of Mont Sainte-Victoire (pictured below).
Referring to the iconic painter as the “emblem and ambassador” of Aix-en-Provence, the mayor said she’s proud that next year the public will be able to discover the bastide for themselves, and see those first paintings Cézanne created there. She added that the most famous of his paintings – the Card Players series – will also be coming to Aix for the occasion.
Cézanne is credited for his significant influence on Cubism, and for inspiring other great artists such as Paul Matisse and Pablo Picasso (who called him “the father of us all”).
