The Four Seasons:Winter

In 1859 Cezanne's father, a hat-maker who had turned himself into a banker in Aix-en-Provence, bought a rundown estate called the Jas de Bouffan. His son was 20 and being pushed through a law degree. He got hold of the walls of the grand salon and painted four seasons straight onto the plaster, this one a young peasant woman sitting by a fire, nearly three metres tall.

At the foot of the panels he signed a name that was not his. They read Ingres, and Winter carries the date 1811, half a century too early. Ingres was still alive then and the most official painter in France, the model every art school held up.

In 1861 his father let him leave for Paris to study. The estate was sold in 1899, the paintings were lifted off the wall and laid onto canvas, and they reached the Petit Palais in 1950 as a gift from the heirs of the dealer Ambroise Vollard.