A Madalena

Cezanne's father bought the Jas de Bouffan, a run-down manor outside Aix, in 1859, and let his son paint directly onto the walls of the big salon. That is where this mourning figure began, not as a picture to sell but as house decoration, in a family where the banker father had pushed the boy into law. Around 1869 Cezanne was 30 and the Paris Salon was refusing him almost every year. The figure was one half of a single wall composition; the other half showed Christ among the dead, and the two were separated when the plaster was cut away and laid down onto canvas. The French state acquired it in 1952, with money from an anonymous Canadian gift.