Ambroise Vollard, Paris

Vollard Estate, Paris

Robert de 🦹Galéa, Paris (acquired from the above)

Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York

Otto Wertheimer, Paris

Jean-Pierre Durand-Matthiesen, Geneva

Walter Feilchenfeldt, Zurich

Jacques Koerfer, Bern

Galerie Durand-Matthiesen, Geneva

Acquired from the above in June 1955

New York, Fine Arts Associates (Otto Gerson), Cézanne, 1956, no.    3, illustrated in the catalogue

New York, Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Cézanne, 1959, no. 61, illustrated in the catalogue

New York, Knoedler Galleries, Cézanne Watercolors, 1963, no. 11, illustrated in the catalogue

Pasadena Art Museum, Cézanne Watercolors, 1967, no. 3, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Vollard archives no. 195

G. Schmidt, Aquarelle von Paul Cézanne, Basel, 1952, p. 28, illustrated pl. 8

Theodore Reff, "A New Exhibition of Cézanne," Burlington Magazine, 1960, CII, p. 117

Jiří Siblík, Paul Cézanne, Dessins, Prague, 1968 & Paris, 1972, illustrated p. 43

John Rewald, Paul Cézanne. The Watercolours: A Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1983, no. 75, catal✨ogued p. 104, illustrated

Very good condition. This watercolor and pencil on paper shows no sign of paper losses or planar distortions. The sheet is hinged at the top edge to the acid-free mount. Two minor tears under 1/8" long at the right-center edge have been patched and stablized from the verso. Visually, the paper is clean, free of stains, and the medium is well preserved and fresh in appearance.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

 La Côte du Jallais à Pontoise reveals the strong influence of Cézanne's fruitful collaboration with Pissarro in the French countryside around Paris during the 1870s. From 1871, the artists would venture together into the verdant environs of Pontoise, a small town outside of Paris, and expand the boundaries of Impressionist painting. Though their styles would converge, by the end of that decade, when he executed the present work, Cézanne was looking beyond the tenets of Impressionism toward the development of a new artistic vocabulary. Though the iconic cypress trees and rolling hills situate this work in the Pontoise period, the isolated brushstrokes and geometric forms reveal the direction that would bring Cézanne to the precipice of Modernism.

Cézanne in looking back on his years working with Pissarro stated: "I too was an Impressionist, I won't hide it. Pissarro had an enormous influence on me. But I wanted to make of impressionist something solid and enduring like the art of museums. I said as much to Maurice Denis... But, listen, a green patch is enough to give us a landscape, just as a flesh tone translated into a face, or gives us a human figure. Which means that all of us perhaps come out of Pissarro... Already in [18]65 he had eliminated black, bitumen, sienna and the ochers [from his palette]. That's a fact. Paint only with the three primary colors and their immediate derivatives, he told me" (quoted in Alex Danchev, Cézanne: A Life, New York, 2012, p. 197).

In his catalogue raisonné of the artist's watercolors, John Rewald writes of the present work: "The underlying pencil drawing shows that is a carefully prepared landscape composition. R. Arnold considered it to be 'closely related to a painting of the same scene made in the years 1879-82 (Venturi no. 319). In its fresh, almost naive charm, the sketch bears witness to Cézanne's contact with the Impressionists. The tonality is cool; areas of white paper left unworked suggest the play of air and light; the brush moves fluently, setting off brisk diagonal accents in the foliage against flat washes in field and sky. An air of spontaneity informs the whole" (John Rewald, op. cit., p. 104).