A Shed

The watercolours by Cézanne in Samuel Courtauld’s collection cover most of the chronological span of the artist’s most sustained engagement with the medium; this sheet is generally considered the earliest. Its subject, however, has long eluded exact identification. The low, ramshackle building partly obscured by dense vegetation has been variously characterised as a cottage, a door in a garden wall, a shed and an outhouse. Whatever the case, this motif is unique in Cézanne’s oeuvre and its site has not yet been discovered, although it is likely to have been situated on the Cézanne family estate of the Jas de Bouffan in Aix-en-Provence. The uncertainty over the identity of the subject is underpinned by Cézanne’s ambiguous handling of spatial recession; it is unclear which areas of the structure are meant to recede and which are parallel to the picture plane. The use of diagonal hatching to indicate projection or recession is also inconsistent, as is made clear in an infrared reflectogram that reveals the graphite underdrawing in those areas most heavily touched with watercolour. In some areas, vigorous hatching projects forms into strong relief, as with the vine to the right of the door; in others, it serves to flatten forms, such as the section of wall at left. The hatching and the relatively broad and even application of watercolour seem instead intended to create a unified, firmly structured two-dimensional plane rather than an illusionistic rendering of the motif. Cézanne’s use of colour here is rather restrained; it is largely limited to viridian green and blue-grey (of varying strengths), with some yellow ochre to render shadows as well as the planks of the wooden door. For the most part, the watercolour accentuates the design, but in some instances it takes on a life of its own, especially in the vivid touches of green in the foreground. The even distribution of the watercolour is consistent with Cézanne’s style around 1880, when he was definitively abandoning Impressionism and striking out in a new direction that favoured the construction of what he famously termed ‘a harmony parallel to nature’ rather than attempting to capture a subjective impression of his surroundings.