Food porn et Paul Cezanne

Another cracking couple of days chilling in Provence with LB and Le Parents. We spent the best part of this morning having indecent thoughts about cheese and prosciutto and fresh strawberries and macaroons and more cheese and more olives and warm baguettes at St-Remy’s weekly farmers market. (I just started typing an analogy about food porn and this market taking things to the next level but it started to get a bit unseemly so I deleted it. So I’ll just say this: Oh. My. God. Best farmers market. Ever.)

It was absolutely heaving and by the time we left we were absolutely salivating. Thankfully it started to rain shortly afterwards so not only did we get to go home and eat cheese, we got to spend the afternoon steaming through the last four episodes of Broadchurch. Yes, arrived a little late to that water cooler TV moment but better late than never, non?

Yesterday though, was my day and I voted for a drive to Aix-en-Provence and a visit to Cezanne’s studio. Cezanne was one of a bunch of artists (Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh...) who invested considerable time in this beautiful part of the world and when he died in 1906 the studio of this Aix native was closed shut with everything left as it was. In 1925 it was bought by Marcel Provence to protect its historical value and in 1954, under the then-ownership of Aix-en-Provence University it was opened to the public.

It’s now managed by the city of Aix and being in this part of the world, it felt like an appropriate pilgrimage to make. My earliest, most distinct encounter with Cezanne and his evocative bowls of fruit, was as one of a bunch of postcards Mum brought me back from a visit to the Louvre when I was a teenager. Even then its quiet beauty struck me, for reasons I still can’t articulate, so to snoop around his studio, to get the opportunity to experience what was a very personal, creative space for someone with considerable art history heft, was incredible. 

One of the guidebooks I read mused that Cezanne would probably be horrified at the thought of all these people trampling through his private studio and well that’s probably true but it didn’t stop us.

For me there’s something so intrinsically special about getting to see where an artist works and particularly when considering the work of older or more historical painters, to break down the experience of looking at their work to imagine them in that space, against that particular moment in broader history, putting brush to canvas. Sometimes, looking at really dull works by, I don’t know, Velazquez (sorry Velazquez fans…) it’s often only the dexterity of the paint stroke that fascinates me. That and picturing whoever painted it wearing velveteen pantaloons while they did.

Thankfully velveteen pantaloons were long gone by the time Cezanne came to be painting his still lifes and portraits of card players and geometric plein air landscapes that would go on to shape and inform the development of Cubism.

Paul Cezanne, Mont Saint-Victoire, 1904, oil on canvas

We weren’t at the studio for terribly long - it’s not a huge space - but we got absolutely drenched walking back to the car afterwards. (The only thing worse than getting caught in the rain? Getting caught in the rain wearing what turns out to be an absorbent raincoat…)

Aix itself is very pretty - a classic, buzzy university town with excellent people watching, great food and lovely squares and narrow streets to wander. Its famed flea market was a TOTAL and UTTER letdown (so it’s lucky we went just for the culture…….. I’m not worried though, it’s ok, there’s still Nice to come for treasure hunting....)

Tomorrow we’re planning to walk to the Saint-Paul asylum, where Van Gogh was treated in 1899 and where he painted some of his most iconic works. I’m really looking forward to that too. For now though, there’s cheese to polish off.