The Bay of Marseille, Seen from L'Estaque
Paul Cezanne (French, 1839–1906)c. 1885
View the original$18
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Materials & printing
Archival matte paper, 189 g/m² (10.3 mil), sourced from Japan, printed with multicolor water-based inkjet so every brushstroke stays crisp. Framed prints arrive ready to hang in a .75″ ayous-wood frame with an acrylite front. Sized to standard frames by cropping, never stretching — at most about 3% comes off one edge, which isn’t noticeable on most pieces, and we only offer a size when it stays that small.
Shipping & returns
Made to order and delivered in 5–8 business days (2–4 to print, 3–4 in transit). US shipping only for now. Because each print is made for your order, all sales are final — but if it arrives damaged or defective, send us a photo within 14 days and we’ll replace it free. Full policy.
Why is it this affordable?
A thin, flat margin on every piece — just enough to keep the store running. Most of what you pay is the print itself. We only sell sizes that reproduce at full quality, and we don’t mark up the large sizes the way most shops do.
About this work
In a letter to his friend and teacher Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne compared the view of the sea from L’Estaque to a playing card, with its simple shapes and colors. The landscape’s configuration and color fascinated him. This painting is one of more than a dozen such vistas created by the artist during the 1880s. Cézanne divided the canvas into four zones—architecture, water, mountain, and sky. Although these four elements are seen repeatedly in Impressionist paintings, Cézanne’s work is very different from that of his fellow artists. Whereas their primary purpose was to record the transient effects of light, Cézanne was interested in the underlying structure and composition of the views he painted. Filling the canvas with shapes defined by strong, contrasting colors and a complex grid of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines, he created a highly compact, dynamic pattern of water, sky, land, and village that at once refers back to traditionally structured landscape paintings and looks forward to the innovations of Cubism. Using blocklike brushstrokes to build the space, Cézanne created a composition that seems both two- and three-dimensional. Not locked tightly in place, his forms appear to touch and shift continually, creating a sense of volume and space that strengthens the composition and brings it to life.
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 80.2 × 100.6 cm (31 5/8 × 39 5/8 in.)
Museum record · 1 owner · 17 exhibitions
Provenance
- Bought from the artist by Ambroise Vollard, Paris ca. 1899; sold to Cornelis Hoogendijk (died 1911), Amsterdam, possibly in May 1899; by descent to Hoogendijk's heirs and on deposit at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; sold in shares to Paul Rosenberg, Jos Hessel, and Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1920; sold through Jos Hessel to Martin A. Ryerson (died 1932), Chicago on June 12, 1920; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1933.
Exhibitions
- Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Moderne Kunst Kring, 1911, no cat. no. Hamburg, Galerie Commeter, 1921, no cat. no. New York, Museum of Modern Art, First Loan Exhibition, Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, Van Gogh, November 1929.
- The Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1-November 1, 1933.
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Cézanne, 1934.
- The Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1-November 1, 1934.
- The Art Institute of Chicago, Masterpiece of the Month, June 1942, no cat. The Art Institute of Chicago, Cézanne: Paintings, Watercolors, and Drawings: A Loan Exhibition, February 1-March 16, 1952, traveled to New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 4-May 18, 1952.
- Seattle World’s Fair, Masterpieces of Art, April 21-September 4, 1962.
- Washington, D. C., The Phillips Collection, Cézanne: An Exhibition in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Phillips Collection, February 27-March 28, 1971, traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago, April 17-May 16, 1971 and Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, June 1-July 3, 1971.
- The Art Institute of Chicago, The Artist Looks at the Landscape, June 22-August 25, 1974, no cat. Albi, Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Trésors impressionnistes du Musée de Chicago, June 27-August 31, 1980.
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape, June 28-September 16, 1984, traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago, October 23, 1984-January 6, 1985 and Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, February 8-April 22, 1985.
- Portland, Westbrook College, Joan Whitney Payson Gallery, May 1-September 29, 1985, no cat. Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, Cézanne and Poussin: The Classical Vision of Landscape, August 9-October 21, 1990.
- Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Cézanne, September 25, 1995-January 7, 1996; London, Tate Gallery, February 8-April 28, 1996; Philadelphia Museum of Art, May 26-August 18, 1996.
- St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, Cézanne and the Russian Avant-Garde of the XX Century, August 8-September 24, 1998; Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, October 5-November 15, 1998.
- Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Cézanne in Provence, January 29–May 7, 2006; Aix-en-Provence, Musée Granet, June 9–September 7, 2006.
- New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cézanne to Picasso Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, September 13, 2006-January 7, 2007; Art Institute of Chicago, February 17-May 13, 2007; Paris, Musée d’Orsay, June 18-Spetember 16, 2007.
- Fort Worth, Tex., Kimbell Museum of Art, The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago, June 29–November 2, 2008.
- Philadelphia, PA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cézanne and Beyond, February 9- May 6 2009, Plate 197.
- Art Institute of Chicago, Cezanne, May 15-Se, 2022; London, Tate, Oct. 5, 2022-Mar. 12, 2023.
