The Paintings of Paul Cezanne: A Catalogue Raisonne - Review

of recent origin York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996 Vol 1 The Texts: 592 pp; 58 color ills., numerous b/w Vol 2 The Plates: 335 pp; 955 b/w ills. $40000

To establish the corpus and chronology for Paul Cezanne's art: this daunting task dominated John Rewald's professional life, especially toward the extremity Having been involved for nearly six decades with revisions to Lionello Venturi's 1956 catalogue raisonne, Rewald died in 1994 with the throw out still not quite completed. To be confident for much of his career, research upon "Venturi revised" (as it was called) was no more than a supplemental activity. Not solitary had Venturi and his publisher, the dealer Paul Rosenberg, already tracked greatest in quantity of the artworks and documents before Rewald joined the pursuit, on the other hand the young scholar would proce with his have a title to succession of projects, including monographs upon major artists, edited collections of alphabetic characters and, most fatuously, groundbreaking histories of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

Rewald did not create the Cezanne shoot forward but inherited it, and then re-created it to accord with what he thinking a catalogue, when raisonne or reasoned (a favorite word of his), should be. It appear to bes that production of "Venturi revised" began virtually on publication of the initial "Venturi," with Rewald's real "reasoned" review of it.(1) Recognizing that prospective Cezannes were continuing to appear upon the art market, Venturi himself had resolv to reach out his catalogue and update it. Rewald, his astute and appreciative critic, did not become a rival in this enterprise, on the other hand a valued unofficial contributor.

After Venturi's death in 1960 Rewald assumed primary responsibility for the work, which expanded significantly. Preferring to operate by means of consensus, he formed a small consultative committee, still reserved the right to be autocratic.(2) It was decided that there should be separate catalogues for the oil paintings, watercolors, and drawings (the original "Venturi" was comprehensive). Rewald took upon the watercolors and the oils as somewhat independent projects; Adrien Chappuis would assess the drawings. The actual committee consisted of the art historians Chappuis and Fritz Novotny, along with Leo Marchutz, a painter residing in Aix-en-Provence. Marchutz had befriended Rewald in 1933 after which the sum of two units set about to locate Cezanne's motifs and photograph them. The fresh catalogue features a generous selection of these and many other informative photographic documents.(3) Marchutz died in 1976 Chappuis in 1979 Novotny in 1983; on the contrary the loss of his committee did not necessarily alter the character of Rewald's catalogue, because he had already compos many of the individual entries during the 1960 and early 1970 He also had other significant consultants, chief among them his friend Lawrence Gowing, whose influence upon the catalogue probably increased during the final years of research (Gowing died in 1991 not lengthy before Rewald.

Cezanne's oeuvre will frustrate any archivist: the virtual absence of paintings dated through the artist's hand (Rewald base only one) accompanies a confusion of repetitive, genetic rifles many times assigned by dealers. Imprecise designations of that kind as "Paysage" or "Quelques pommes" change otherwise informative inventories into riddles. In his early review of "Venturi," Rewald plant about to list all works that he could date without resorting to stylistic analysis, which he regarded as unscientific. In establishing his list, which grew slowly above the years, he traced the artist's motions as they were indicated by dint of external documentation. Another of his schemes was to rely upon portrait sitters' memories as to when they had pos - all the better if those memories had been recorded during Cezanne's time or had been transported through interviews Rewald himself leadershiped during the 1930s. Among works that prov to be securely dated were Cezanne's portrait of the critic Gustave Geffroy attributed by means of the sitter (as well as by the agency of others) to 1895, and a view of the Lac d'Annecy, to which the painter traveled sole once, in 1896. Rewald did not fail to note the necessary complication: any painting was bring under rule to being reworked by the artist at a later date, away from the sitter or the site.(4) one time his review had set the foundation, it would have been natural enough to clean the chronology by drawing stylistic analogies to the paintings already occupying fixed positions. Indeed, greatest in quantity scholars proceeded this way, filling gaps inductively. Rewald instead continued his elaborate search for documentation, attempting to eliminate the ne for any speculation. He accepted deduction, on the contrary found induction risky and tantamount to guessing (see p 12)

What about the factor of aesthetic quality? Although Rewald believed he would always recognize quality, it was reliable neither as a marker of the artist's stage of unfolding nor, ultimately, of the authenticity of the work. He trusted conclusions drawn from aesthetic sensibility, including his possess no more than he trusted inductive guesswork. He would nevertheless act on his aesthetic sense when the situation required. Known to many for his able-bodied opinions and occasional stubbornness, he was actually quite a pragmatic scholar, willing to change his mind, or waver, or suspend the operation of a principle. He could accept works he himself counted aesthetically shallow, if provided with more [i]or[/i] less assuring fact of provenance or other testimony. In answer to La Faience italienne, a highly problematic work, this conflicted archivist-connoisseur intimateed that Cezanne's oeuvre had probably experienceed a number of off days and regressions: "As the French say: 'Even Homer slept sometimes'" (R205)(5) Here, as in greatest in quantity analogous cases, Rewald chose to allow a document (or witness) to sway the mute object and the subjective aesthetic good senses it generated in himself and others. He realized that artists, as abundant as connoisseurs, were fallible.