Cézanne's Studio (Atelier de Cézanne), Aix-en-Provence

Cézanne's Studio (the Atelier des Lauves) is the workshop where Paul Cézanne painted for the last four years of his life, at 9 Avenue Paul Cézanne on the Lauves hill in Aix-en-Provence. Owned by the city and run as a small museum, it opens only for a seasonal period with compulsory booking. It suits art lovers following the Cézanne trail around Aix.

A farmhouse on the Lauves hill bought in 1901

In November 1901, after his mother's death and the sale of family property, Cézanne bought an old farmhouse and about 7,000 square metres of land on the Lauves hill, a short climb north of the old town. He engaged an architect and a mason to build a new two-storey house with a large studio upstairs. He never lived there. Each day he walked up from his apartment in Aix to work, painting in the studio and on the hillside until his death in 1906.

Marcel Provence keeps the studio as it was

The property passed to his son Paul. In 1921 Marcel Joannon, an admirer known as Marcel Provence, bought it, lived on the ground floor and left the studio as Cézanne had left it. Artists and historians, among them John Rewald, came to see it. After Joannon's death, Rewald and the writer James Lord set up a memorial committee that raised enough money to buy the property in 1952, and it opened as a museum in 1954. The city of Aix-en-Provence has owned it since 1969.

His easel, coat and the skulls he painted

The upstairs studio, lit by its large windows, still holds his easel, his coat and hat, tools and the everyday objects he painted again and again: skulls, jugs and fruit bowls. It shows the setting where he worked; his paintings are held by museums in France and abroad. The shady garden he tended surrounds the house. The studio reopened in 2026 after restoration.

Glass roof, The Bathers and his last still lifes

The studio was completed in September 1902, with large windows and a glass roof to bring in light. Cézanne worked on The Bathers here, and the room still holds his work equipment, furniture and the models of his last still lifes; some watercolours and drawings are shown too. The ground floor was for daily living. In 2012 the studio received the French state's Maison des Illustres label, given to homes of notable figures, and it hosts temporary exhibitions and cultural events.