The Barnes Collection is a quirky museum that is now located in Philadelphia. The eccentric art collector required all his art to be displayed a particular way. Which is perhaps why two Cézannes hidden behind other works weren’t uncovered before now.
Writes Randy Kennedy in the NY Times, “In 1921, the wily art collector Albert C. Barnes wrote to Paris to his friend and fellow collector Leo Stein, who was in dire need of money and had deputized Barnes to sell some of his holdings in the United States. They included five watercolor landscapes by Paul Cézanne, but Barnes reported that he had failed to find ‘anybody who seems to think they are sufficiently important to want to own them.’
“It was pure mercantile flimflam. Barnes turned around and bought the watercolors for himself, at $100 each, installing them permanently in his personal museum near [Philadelphia]. Now it turns out that Barnes got a better deal than even he had thought: A conservation treatment of the watercolors has revealed two previously unknown Cézanne works — a graphite drawing and a watercolor with graphite — on the verso (the reverse side) of two of the watercolors.
“Hidden beneath brown paper backing, the newly discovered pieces are unfinished, but they have sent tremors through the world of Cézanne scholarship, where additions to his body of work are exceedingly rare and where even the resurfacing of long-unseen pieces can be huge news. …
” ‘These are a perfect example of how much we still don’t know about this collection,’ said Martha Lucy, a consulting curator at the Barnes and an expert on its Renoir and Cézanne holdings. ‘To add new work to Cézanne’s oeuvre is incredible.’ “
Art: “New” Cézanne at the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia
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