Aix. But, curiously, it did not end the seclusion of Hortense and Paul or the segrega- tion of Cezanne's painting from his private life. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, it would appear that the Cezanne marriage increasingly became a kind of inconve- nient marriage of convenience. Vincent van Gogh described it enviously as a "middle class marriage" that allowed him to get a "hard-on" in his work rather than in real-life "debauchery."16 t his responsibility to Although Cezanne was scrupulous abou Hortense and Paul, they continued to live apart from him, going to Paris while he went back to Aix after an unsatisfactory family trip to Switzerland in 1890; after that he had to force them to return to Aix, but when they did so, they lived in an apart- ment while he lived with his mother at }as de Bouffan. There was trouble between Cezanne mere and Cezanne's wife; that was part of the reason why the couple so often lived apart. At the same time it is clear that Cezanne and Hortense, both extremely difficult people by all accounts — Cezanne all but schizophrenic and Hortense apparently dull, recalcitrant, and unpleasant—were more or less estranged from fairly early on, although Cezanne continued obsessively to paint the woman his friends disparagingly called "la boule," and she repeatedly sat still to be painted.17 As for his son, Paul, Cezanne called him "the brat" when he was a child but clearly felt growing affection for him as he grew to manhood. After the 1890 trip the family sometimes traveled together but were more often than not to be found in separate places, even when they were all in Aix, and especially as Paul grew up and Cezanne began constructing studios for himself apart from his domicile—the first in 1900, the second and final one at Les Lauves, on the northern outskirts of Aix, which he bought in 1901 and whose construction was com- pleted the following year (fig. 9). Although the latter was owned in common by Figure 9 Exterior of Cezanne's studio at Les Lauves, 1902 21 THE BIOGRAPHY OF OBJECTS