Cezanne's watercolors to be exhibited in Oxford

A total of 16 watercolors of French Post-Impressionist Paul Cezanne will be displayed in a museum in Oxford on Thursday, which will be the first time that such a great number of watercolors of the artist being exhibited in Britain. Held in the 300-year-old Ashmolean Museum, the forthcoming exhibition of Cezanne and the Modern is organized by the Princeton University Art Museum in cooperation with the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation. The heart of the exhibition will be 24 artworks by famous artist Cezanne, which including six oils, two drawings and 16 watercolors. Those watercolors constitute one of the finest and best-preserved groups of his watercolors in the world. Different from his most recognized dark tone and thickly planes of oils, the watercolors of Cezanne look softer and breezier. The 16 watercolors of the artist will include landscapes and still lifes from 1875 to 1906, the year he died, and the oils will include a portrait of an artist's son, one of his most famous paintings of Mount Sainte-Victorie and some other landscapes. Besides the works of Cezanne, 26 other extraordinary paintings and sculptures and carves by 18 artists, such as Paul Gauguin, Jacques Lipchitz, Edouard Manet, Amedeo Modigliani, Camille Pissarro, Vincent van Gogh and Chaim Soutine will be showed during the exhibition, which will last until June 22. "The exhibition will offer visitors the opportunities to see extraordinary masterpieces by some of the most famous artists of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements." said Colin Harrison, senior curator of European Art of the museum during the press preview on Monday. "We've never seen many of these works together and this is the first outing in this country," he added. Christopher Brown, director of the museum said after the first show in Britain, the works all collected by American businessman Henry Pearlman and his foundation, will head to Musee Granet, a museum of Provence, France in July, where Cezanne went through his mature and final periods.