TWO AUTHORS JOURNEY TO PROVENANCE FOR A GIRL'S PORTRAIT
SO YOU WANT to write a novel about Paul Cézanne, the French
Postimpressionist painter. Three elements will suffice: the tale of Cézanne’s
secret girlfriend, a murder, and a painting of the girl. The splendid backdrop
of Provenance, the painter’s native region in the south of France, will also be
a great plus.
These are
the precise elements employed in two recent novels with Cézanne as the
centerpiece. In 2009, art historian Barbara Corrado Pope gave us Cézanne’s Quarry: A Mystery. Then in
2015 we have M. L. Longworth’s The
Mystery of the Lost Cézanne.
Cézanne’s life
has its knowns and unknowns. One mostly-accepted belief is that he had a
girlfriend on the side while in a common-law “marriage” to Hortense, with whom
he had a son (and later a formal marriage).
Other Cézanne
scholars don’t see the great painter as being particularly shy or loyal with
women, noting that he frequented brothels. Whatever the truth of Cézanne’s
libido, these two novels present a story of his innocent love of someone
besides Hortense. This object of affection was also a model for Cézanne, so
naturally a painting of her is central to the plot.
In Cézanne Quarry, art historian Pope ties
her story to the famous mountain—Mont Sainte-Victoire—and quarries that Cezanne
painted. It is the era in which the geology of Charles Lyell and the evolutionary
theory of Charles Darwin are in the headlines. A British geologist, Charles
Westbury, arrives to study Provenance’s rock formations. Westbury gives public
talks down at the quarry. He’s also cohabiting with a mistress, Solange Vernet,
a girl of mysterious background.
One day Solange
is found dead in the quarry. For the local straight-arrow cop, detective
Bernard Martin, there are two suspects: Westbury and Cézanne. The painter, you
see, uses Solange as a model. Of course, we will find out in the end that neither
of them killed her. But the prospects lend to a lively red-herring across the
novel.
Solange
hangs a Cézanne painting of herself in the home she shares with Westbury, which
spurs some jealousy. However, Westbury and Cézanne are at odds over more than
the girl.
As a
geologist, Westbury values Mont Sainte-Victoir as fodder for scientific theory.
Cézanne extolls it as an artistic vision. More than a few arguments arose
between the geologist and the painter, and it was these heated
sessions—according to witnesses—that have us thinking one of them has committed
the crime of passion.
As the maid
in the Westbury household tells detective Martin, Solange called the two
arguing men “fools”: “I remember the last words she said before she ran to her
room and locked the door. ‘Only two men could fight over a mountain.’”
Westbury
will, in the end, show the greater devotion to Solange. Detective Martin finds
out that the real killer is the new police inspector, Albert Frank, who actually
is a former criminal who’d once had Solange (calling her a “whore”). At the
quarry, Westbury resists his arrest by the corrupt Frank. The Englishman,
swearing to avenge Solange, is shot dead, but not before gunning down Frank.
The story
ends on this philosophical note: “Somewhere near the foot of the mountain,
Cézanne was rolling up his canvas and tying his easel to a donkey, oblivious to
the fact that he had won. He, not Westbury,
would be left to conquer the mountain.”
This all
took place in 1885, when art historians believe Cézanne had an affair just
before formal marriage to Hortense. Thus, Longworth also plots her modern-day Mystery of the Lost Cézanne around a
search to solve the 1885 mystery.
The scene
is the city of Aix in the region of Provenance. The members of a cigar club
learn that one of their members, Rene, has found a Cézanne painting—a portrait
of a girl—in the building where the painter used to live (since Aix retains
many of its old buildings).
The next
day Rene is found dead. Oddly, a beautiful black American woman, a PhD art
history expert on Cézanne from Yale, is found standing over the dead body. Her
name is Rebecca Shultz. The list of suspects has begun.
In all of Longworth’s
novels, set in Provenance with a side focus on French cuisine, two sleuths
solve the crimes: a widowed judge named Verlaque and his mid-thirties
girlfriend Marine Bonnet, a law professor. In this murder case, the killer will
not be the Yale professor after all, but rather thuggish art thieves from
America who had once worked for Rebecca’s wealthy parents.
As an African-American
orphan, Rebecca had been adopted by a Jewish art-collecting couple in New York.
They had amassed Cézanne paintings, giving Rebecca a lifelong familiarity with
the painter (and thus her PhD on Cézanne). However, Rebecca feels that her
academic peers resent her privileged wealth, so to prove her merit, she’s in
France to make an academic breakthrough. She wants to identify the girl with
whom Cézanne had his mysterious affair in 1885.
Fortunately,
the painting Rene found in a ceiling panel is exactly that girl. Before long,
the Aix legal eagles and Rebecca figure out the model was a young woman who
worked at a bakery Cézanne patronized. Sadly, this young woman died the year
after Cézanne met her. Sadder still because this is Cézanne’s only painting of
a woman with a happy face and bright clothing.
And it was
pure, Verlaque concludes: “Cezanne was interested in ideas; perhaps this woman
shared those. Perhaps that was enough to base a relationship on; that’s all there was.” A refreshing case of
French prudery, it seems.
The murder
plot is more of a stretch. Back in New York, a gang of art thieves, who
specialized in warehouse theft, had stolen works from the Shultz estate in the
past. They caught word of Rene’s discovery (by coincidence, hearing Rene’s
excitement through the wall!), and set up an elaborate ruse. On their thuggish
visit to Rene, he was killed accidently during a scuffle.
We are
relieved, of course, that Rebecca is not the culprit (a novel-long suspect).
She will also prove herself to academia. And if that is not enough, she will
quickly adopt the non-prudish French manner of love. Young Rebecca, who looks
like a fashion model, ends up jumping in bed with Verlaque’s still-married father
(a man in his sixties or seventies!) up in swinging Paris, where she thinks
she’ll stay awhile.
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