Cezanne's Studio

Above is a photograph of Cézanne's studio in Aix-en-Provence is described by Robert Hughes as "one of the sacred places of the modern mind, a reliquary" (Hughes, R. 1991 p.124).

In 1906, just before he died Cézanne wrote a letter to his son:

"I must tell you that as a painter I am becoming more clear-sighted before nature . . .
Here on the bank of the river the motifs multiply, the same subject seen from a different angle offers
subject for study for the most powerful interest for months without changing place, by turning now
more to the right, now more to the left" (Rewald, 1995, p. 327).

On the 21st August 1906 he wrote a letter to Emile Bernard:

"Now, being  old, nearly 70 years, the sensations of colour, which give the light, are for me the reason for the abstractions which do not allow me to cover my canvas entirely nor to pursue the delimitation of the objects where their points of contact are fine and delicate; from which it results that my image or picture is incomplete"  (Harrison and Wood, 2001 p.39)

Sources:

Harrison, C., and Wood, P., Art in Theory 1900-1990 Oxford: Blackwells.

Hughes, R., The Shock of the New London: Thames and Hudson

Rewald, John (ed. 1995), Paul Cézanne, Letters New York: Da Capo Press.