Picnic on a Riverbank

This is a small picture, about 26 by 34 centimetres, painted around 1873 while Cezanne was living at Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris. He had moved out there to work beside Camille Pissarro, who was nine years older and who spent those two years getting him to lighten his palette and build a picture out of small separate touches instead of loading the paint on with a knife.

The subject is one he returned to all his life, figures out of doors near water. What happened to the canvas afterwards is the unusual part. Claude Monet bought it and kept it at Giverny until his death in 1926. It was one of more than a dozen Cezannes he owned, hung in his own bedroom rather than in the rooms where visitors were received.