Carpenter of colour

On Monday 15 October 1906, Paul Cézanne was painting on the hillside above his Les Lauves studio on the outskirts of Aix-en-Provence when he was caught in a violent rainstorm. Having sacked his coachman the week before in a row over money, the 67-year-old painter was on foot, and by the time he was picked up by a passing laundry cart and driven home to his house in Aix he was soaked to the skin. On the Tuesday, after rising at dawn to continue work on a portrait of his gardener Vallier, he collapsed into bed, and on the following Monday his wife and son were summoned from Paris. They arrived too late — according to local gossip, Mme Cézanne hadn’t wanted to miss a fitting with her dressmaker. Within five weeks of his death from pneumonia on 23 October, Hortense Cézanne and young Paul had cleared out the artist’s studio; within five months they had sold off the contents to the Paris dealer Ambroise Vollard for the substantial sum of 275,000 francs.