Paul Cézanne
Cezanne moved along the rue de l'Ouest to number 32 in April 1880, staying in the same poor Plaisance quarter.
32 rue de l'Ouest
Still standing
Outside only
Someone else
The second of Paul Cézanne's two apartments on the rue de l'Ouest, taken in April 1880 — the address he was using while Émile Zola was writing the novel that ended their friendship.
- 32 rue de l'Ouest, 75014 Paris
- Cézanne's address from April 1880
The place, briefly
Paul Cézanne moved along the rue de l'Ouest to number 32 in April 1880, staying in the same poor Plaisance quarter. He was forty-one and had effectively stopped trying to exhibit.
The 1880s are the decisive decade, and most of what matters in them happened in Provence rather than here. But Paris kept the friendship that defined his early life, and Paris ended it: in 1886 Émile Zola published L'Œuvre, whose central character is a painter of enormous ambition who fails and kills himself. Cézanne wrote a short, courteous letter of thanks and, so far as the record shows, never spoke to him again after nearly forty years.
That was also the year his father died, leaving him financially independent for the first time at forty-seven, and the year he married Hortense Fiquet.
The building is private.
Key facts
- From April 1880
- Plaisance, then a poor district on the southern edge
- Zola publishes L'Œuvre; the friendship ends
- His father dies and he marries Hortense Fiquet
- Private — exterior only
Timeline
Cézanne takes 32 rue de l'Ouest in April.
Zola publishes L'Œuvre; the two men appear never to have spoken again.
Cézanne's father dies, leaving him independent; he marries Hortense Fiquet.
On the map
Questions before you go
What ended Cézanne's friendship with Zola?
Zola's 1886 novel L'Œuvre, whose central figure is a painter of great ambition who fails and takes his own life. Cézanne sent a brief letter of thanks and the correspondence appears to have stopped there, after almost forty years.
People who knew this place
Within walking distance
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