Plate 10 Paul Cézanne Hortensia, c, 1895-1900 Watercolor and graphite on paper, 49 x 31 cm 1 3 (i9 /4 x i2 /ie in.) New York, private collection On occasion Cezanne's still lifes in water- color press outside the studio. Here the potted hydrangea (or perhaps it is a geranium) seems to seek escape from the confines of the studio in order to bridge the spaces between indoors and outdoors, still life and landscape. Hortensia (French for "hydrangea") seems to brook neither intimacy nor enclosure, as it has even escaped the pot to which it belongs (a second, unfinished stem is found next to it, pentimento-like, within the pot) and leans with human fervor toward the window, whose diagonal line of curtain opposes the sweep of its yearning slant. Like a romantic woman at the window (its floral character suggests its femi- ninity), it seems bent on release from its confine- ment to the interior, as well as from its stillness and from its very condition of plantedness. With its straining stem, it is more alive than any portrait that Cézanne ever painted. 68 CÉZANNE IN THE STUDIO
Cézanne in the Studio: Still Life in Watercolors Page 82 Page 84