Near the Pool at Jas de Bouffan
1883/1887
Medium
graphite on wove paper
Dimensions
overall: 15.2 x 23.7 cm (6 x 9 5/16 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art
Accession Number
1992.51.9.eee
Art Historical Context
**Near the Pool at Jas de Bouffan** is a delicate graphite drawing by Paul Cézanne, created between 1883 and 1887. This intimate study captures a serene corner of the artist's family estate, Jas de Bouffan, near Aix-en-Provence southern France. Cézanne a pivotal Post-Impressionist, obsessively returned to this landscape throughout his career, using it as a personal laboratory to explore form, light, and space. The estate's lush gardens and reflective pool inspired dozens of his oil paintings, making this drawing a window into his iterative creative process during a transitional period in his w...
About the Artist
Paul Cezanne · 1839–1906
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), born in Aix-en-Provence to a prosperous banker father, Louis-Auguste, and mother Anne-Elisabeth-Honorine Aubert, grew up in a bourgeois family that later acquired the Jas de Bouffan estate, where he painted his earliest murals. As a youth, he formed the inseparable trio "Les Trois Inséparables" with schoolmates Émile Zola and Baptistin Baille. Despite his father's wishes ...