Ambroise Vollard, Paris
Gaston Bernheim de Villers, Paris (until 1932)
Private Collection, Paris

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Aquarelles de Cézanne, 1956
Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Cézanne - Aquarelliste et peintre, 1960, no. 17

John Rewald, Paul Cézanne, The Watercolours, A Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1983, no. 466, illustrated n.p.

Executed on cream laid paper, not laid down. There is a 1cm. repaired tear halfway up the left edge, a 4cm. repaired tear in the lower right corner, a 1cm. tear at the centre of the right edge and a 5mm. minor surface tear towards the right edge. Apart from some light foxing in the upper part of the sheet and staining to the reverse of the sheet, caused by a previous mount, this work is in good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the catalogue illustration.
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This particularly delicate watercolour was executed by Cézanne during a stay at the Hôtel de l'Abbaye at Talloires, a small town at the foot of the Alps on the Swiss border. There he painted many views of the Lac d'Annecy, a small lake minutes from his quarters in the converted monastery. This watercolour corresponds with others he executed during his two month visit in its very gentle washes of colour that lightly capture the contours of the lake, the boats, the mountains behind, and the Château de Duingt on the left. Scholars attribute the often sketchy quality of these works to the fact that his rooms at the Abbey didn't actually look out on to the lake itself, but rather on to an inner courtyard, and he rarely retouched the watercolours executed outside. During his stay in Talloires, Cézanne produced several beautiful watercolours, of which this particular work is the most completely executed.

To paint a watercolour had often been considered a fickle task due to the complex nature of the medium. However, in Cézanne's watercolours, we see instead a desire to exploit these very difficulties, such as the thin, uncontrollable quality of the colour, to create a unique form of artistic representation. Cézanne's watercolours "rely much less on empirical data than do most of his oil paintings; they relate to nature - that is to the motifs he confronted - in a more synthesized and abstract manner" (William Rubin, Cézanne Watercolors (exhibition catalogue), Acqua♕vella Galleries, Inc.,🃏 New York, 1999, p. 7).