Paul Cézanne

Cézanne came to Giverny in the autumn of 1894, at Claude Monet’s invitation. The chronology established by the Société Cezanne places the stay between 30 September and 28 November 1894; the house’s own synthesis gives “7 to 30 November”, a dating that could not be confirmed against a published source. During the stay he painted several views of the village. Tradition reports that on 28 November Monet gathered Auguste Rodin, Georges Clemenceau, Gustave Geffroy and Octave Mirbeau around him, and that Cézanne left abruptly, leaving unfinished canvases behind; these episodes have not been verified against documents.

Cézanne’s stay at the Hôtel Baudy is attested by the establishment’s archives: the guest register, now held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, records it. There he mixed with other lodgers, several of them American. The account of a dinner bringing together Cézanne, Mary Cassatt and Theodore Robinson, like the letter in which Cassatt is said to describe the painter at table, belongs to tradition and has not been verified against documents.