Paul Cézanne died of pneumonia, an infection of the lungs, at his home in Aix-en-Provence, in southern France, in late October 1906. He was 67. About a week earlier a storm had caught him painting outdoors, and the illness that followed killed him.
He was already unwell. In September, according to A Provençal Chronology of Cézanne, a day-by-day timeline of his last years, he still suffered from what he called cerebral troubles, a kind of headache, and he leaned on his son Paul to manage his affairs.
Cool Stories About Art is a newsletter to learn art the fun way.
Join 200,000+ readers and get:
10 new art stories / month
The entire archive of content (1,000+ articles)
Comment, ask questions, and chat with other readers
The story people repeat is a clean one. In September 1906, Cézanne, then 67 and in poor health, wrote from Aix to a younger painter, Émile Bernard, that he had sworn to die painting. Then, the story goes, the storm hit, and he died at his easel in the rain.
That is not what happened. The storm did not kill him that day. A passing laundry cart found him on a road, took him home, and he lived for about another week, dying at home. The legend skips the days that followed.
What did Cézanne write on the day of the storm?
He wrote to his son Paul that he was still at work, and he asked him to order two dozen brushes. The letter is dated Aix, 15 October 1906. The weather had turned rainy and cooler, Cézanne told him, and he was painting with difficulty.
That fall he was still painting outdoors, in the country of Mont Sainte-Victoire, the mountain above Aix. In August and September he worked in the late afternoons on the banks of the Arc, the small river that runs past Aix.
On Monday 15 October, according to the critic Laura Gascoigne in The Spectator, he was working above his studio at Les Lauves, the building he had put up in 1901 on the hills north of the city, when a violent rainstorm broke.
He did not go in. The chronology says he stayed out in the rain for several hours. Gascoigne adds that he had sacked his coachman the week before, in a row over money, which may explain why no carriage of his own took him home.
Then he collapsed on a road. A passing laundry cart picked him up, soaked through, and carried him home.
A portrait of his gardener, Vallier, was still unfinished in the studio at Les Lauves.
What You'll Discover
What he did the next morning.
What he demanded from his paint dealer.
Who reached his bedside, and when.
The date nobody agrees on.