Still Life in Watercolors

Aix. But, curiously, it did not end the seclusion of Hortense and Paul or the segregation
of Cezanne's painting from his private life. Indeed, for all intents and purposes,
it would appear that the Cezanne marriage increasingly became a kind of inconvenient
marriage of convenience. Vincent van Gogh described it enviously as a "middle
class marriage" that allowed him to get a "hard-on" in his work rather than in real-life
"debauchery." 16 Although Cezanne was scrupulous about his responsibility to
Hortense and Paul, they continued to live apart from him, going to Paris while he
went back to Aix after an unsatisfactory family trip to Switzerland in 1890; after that
he had to force them to return to Aix, but when they did so, they lived in an apartment
while he lived with his mother at }as de Bouffan. There was trouble between
Cezanne mere and Cezanne's wife; that was part of the reason why the couple so
often lived apart. At the same time it is clear that Cezanne and Hortense, both
extremely difficult people by all accounts — Cezanne all but schizophrenic and
Hortense apparently dull, recalcitrant, and unpleasant—were more or less estranged
from fairly early on, although Cezanne continued obsessively to paint the woman his
friends disparagingly called "la boule," and she repeatedly sat still to be painted. 17 As
for his son, Paul, Cezanne called him "the brat" when he was a child but clearly felt
growing affection for him as he grew to manhood.
After the 1890 trip the family sometimes traveled together but were more
often than not to be found in separate places, even when they were all in Aix, and
especially as Paul grew up and Cezanne began constructing studios for himself apart
from his domicile—the first in 1900, the second and final one at Les Lauves, on the
northern outskirts of Aix, which he bought in 1901 and whose construction was completed
the following year (fig. 9). Although the latter was owned in common by
Figure 9
Exterior of Cezanne's studio
at Les Lauves, 1902
21
THE BIOGRAPHY OF OBJECTS