The Radical Landscape That Set Paul Cezanne's Auction Record

Paul Cezanne's La Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1888) sold for $137.8m at Christie's in New York on November 9, 2022. The oil on canvas work had been traded 5 times in the past.

This Saint-Victoire landscape came closest to Cezanne's aim of evoking the sensation of standing within nature with its close-up view of the summit of the mountain near his home in the South of France. The artist omitted an olive grove in the foreground to create his radical, semi-abstracted composition.

The painting was originally owned by Auguste Pellerin, a voracious collector who had made his fortune manufacturing margarine. The landscape was later acquired by a Greek shipping magnate and in 2001 it was bought by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

In July 2025 the artist's last studio, which he had built to his designs, opened to the public in Aix-en-Provence. He would visit every day, arriving early in the morning to paint there right up until his death in 1906 aged 67. A short walk further up the hill, along what is now called the Avenue Paul Cezanne, is the Terrain des Peintres (painter's field), a spot that provides a panoramic view of the mountain that Cezanne made famous.

The sale beat Cezanne's previous auction record by $77.29m, a 125% rise. The artist's previous record was set by Rideau cruchon et compotier (1893), which sold for $60.5m at Sotheby's on May 10, 1999.

A Brief History of Cezanne at Auction