“Last rays of Sun”: Cézanne’s Aix
Dr Charlotte de Mille
Friday 26 – Sunday 28 September 2025
£495
This tour is now fully booked but we are happy receive applications for the waiting list and/or expressions of interest for a re-run at a future date: please email us at short.courses@courtauld.ac.uk.
Course description
Cézanne believed the “eye educates itself by contact with nature”, and for him that meant a deep dive into the landscape of his native Aix-en-Provence.
This tour follows Cézanne’s invitation to immerse ourselves in the landscape that so inspired him. We shall visit his studio, his family home, Jas de Buffon, and the viewing point at Les Lauves, so iconic through his depictions of Mont Sainte Victoire. To celebrate the re-opening of both Cézanne’s studio and house after a long closure, the Musée Granet in Aix is hosting a major exhibition of his work alongside those inspired by him. The Granet served as Cézanne’s first inspiration as a painter, though famously its director refused to hang his work in his lifetime. Although that history has long been redressed, this new temporary exhibition is the perfect time for a Cézanne immersion in Aix.
On the final day, we take in the Musée Cantini in Marseille, which houses twentieth-century masters equally influenced by Cézanne and the South, and the Musée Regards de Provence – a collection of old-master and modern works demonstrating the rich and diverse tradition of artistic responses to the region.
Lecturer's biography
Dr Charlotte de Mille curates The Courtauld Gallery’s music programme. With the Gallery she co-authored Animating Art History, a joint initiative with Central St. Martin’s and the University for the Creative Arts, which was long-listed for a Clore Award in Museum Learning. She was Visiting Scholar at Lingnan University, Hong Kong in 2018, and Mid-Career Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art 2019-20. She is Associate Lecturer at The Courtauld teaching the MA Music and the Visual Arts. She edited Music and Modernism (2011) and is co-editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook to Music and Art (2023). Her book Bergson in Britain: Modern Art and Philosophy was published by EUP in the autumn of 2023. She is co-director of the project Intersections of Music and Art in Europe 1950-2000, with the Fondazione Cini, Venice.