The Trail's Our Thing

We normally visit Aix on one of their three big market days (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays), but I booked our tickets for Wednesday so we could avoid the market crowds. We parked in the garage and headed down the now-familiar Rue Pasteur to the center of Aix, passing the old cathedral, the clock tower, and the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. The square was quiet this morning as people enjoyed a coffee at the outdoor cafes; on market days the colorful flower market is held here.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the food market in operation on the Place Richèlme, though we had passed several people carrying market baskets. The produce market must be an every-day affair. We had time for petit déjeuner at a sidewalk café; while we waited for our drinks and croissants, I wandered around the market stands snapping my usual photos.

Plums and nectarines at the daily food market

Then it was time to find the Musée Granet, on the other side of the tree-lined Cours Mirabeau. I had ordered tickets on the internet just before we left the USA, which we picked up yesterday at a huge Carrefour hypermarché near the TGV station in Avignon. (Another long story that I won’t tell here!) I reserved our tickets for 10:30 am, which Charley and I thought would be ideal: we wouldn’t have to get up too early and our trip would be perfectly timed for lunch after our museum visit. After we got here, two different friends told us they hadn’t really enjoyed the Cézanne exhibition, mainly because the museum was so hot. We hoped that our timing would help us avoid a hot and stuffy experience.

We queued up outside the museum, waiting for our admission time. The museum is in a pretty side street, on Place Saint Jean-de-Malte by an impressive 12th century church. The Cézanne exhibition schedule begins at 9:30 with an admission every hour. You can arrive a bit late, but aren’t admitted early. We bought an exhibition program and an audioguide, which the three of us shared.

The route inside the museum took us through several rooms housing the permanent collection of the Museé Granet, mostly by French painters but including work by Rembrandt and Reubens. Finally we climbed the stairs to the Cézanne exhibit.

Our family has a strong interest in the French Impressionist painters, and we’ve learned lot about Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh through our previous travels. Cézanne hadn’t really interested us before, despite his connection to Provence. Somehow I mistakenly associated him primarily with the “still life” paintings of fruit on a table.

But today I discovered I love the work of Cézanne. I absolutely loved this exhibition! Now I appreciate Cézanne’s deep connection to the countryside around Aix; his distinctive palate of blues, greens, reds, golds, and browns—the colors of Provence; the deliberate composition of his paintings; the poetry he expressed through his work.

Each of the 12 rooms involved in the exhibition had a different theme, reflecting various periods and subjects of Cézanne’s life and work: the Jas de Bouffan where his family lived, Mont Sainte-Victoire, the Bathers. The Museé Granet has eight Cézanne works in their permanent collection; the other 112 paintings were borrowed from museums and private collections all over the world, including many museums we’ve visited in Europe and America. The audioguide was especially helpful in enabling me to understand subtleties of the highlighted paintings and Cézanne’s evolving style. Some quotes from his letters were displayed in some of the rooms and were included in the audio tour. As we learned more about the man, we better understood his work.

At the end of the exhibit we visited a couple of rooms that provided more perspective on Cézanne, including his influence on other painters like Monet, Picasso and Matisse. Finally we emerged into the museum’s permanent collection of archaeological objects and sculptures—quite a contrast to Cézanne, but very interesting. We were inside the museum for about an hour and a half. And our timing was perfect—it wasn’t too hot or too crowded, except in the small museum shop at the very end.

We had toured the museum somewhat independently, staying fairly close to trade off the audioguide and not getting too far apart, but now we had a chance to compare notes. We were all very enthusiastic about what we had seen… on a kind of artistic high.

After leaving the museum, we stepped into the adjacent church, arriving to find the noon mass in service. Five or six people in white robes were standing in the front singing, their voices seeming to fill the entire church. We sat for a few minutes in the back, pleased to have discovered this peaceful environment.

Then lunchtime! We picked a small Italian place (La Pizza) on Rue Aude, a few blocks off the Cours Mirabeau… unusual and very good half pizzas, cooked in a wood-fired oven, just dripping with cantal cheese. The rose wine was light and very cold, just perfect on a hot summer’s day. We were just a few doors away from one of our favorite shops in Aix—Terre è Provence, where we bought our large collection of hand painted Provençal pottery last year. The collection grew just a bit today. We poked into a couple of other shops on our way back to the parking garage, just enjoying the pleasure of being back in Aix. We also stopped in the Saint Sauveur Cathedral to see the completed renovation of the baptistery, parts of which date to the 5th century.

The 16th century clocktower in Aix

Around 2:30 we left Aix, headed north on a slightly different route. We wound through quiet country roads, passing vineyards, old chateaus, and a massive field of sunflowers.

Sunflowers near Rognes

And then we rounded a corner to the view we love, from any direction.

“There’s the Luberon!!” Kelly exclaimed from her seat in the back, putting her book aside.

I couldn't let my family down. “And I see Mourre Nègre!”

Note: The Cézanne exhibit continues at the Musée Granet until September 17th. During this special Cézanne celebration in Aix, several other special Cézanne sites are open to the public.