Portland Gets Cezanne

It’s the most important acquisition for the Portland Art Museum in 40 years: an 1872 painting by French Impressionist Paul Cezanne that could be a bargain at a little over $1 million. The 1872 painting, “Paris: Quai de Bercy - La Halle aux Vin,” depicts a wine warehouse on the left bank of the Seine River. “I’m so happy,” said John Buchanan, the museum’s executive director. “It’s the single most important acquisition the museum’s made since 1959.” That’s when the museum bought one of its signature works, Claude Monet’s 1914-15 painting “Waterlilies.” Buchanan placed the Cezanne’s price “in the low seven figures.”“Quai de Bercy” is 28.75 inches high and 36.25 inches wide and is considered an important work. Dr. Joseph Rishel, a curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art who organized a major Cezanne exhibition in 1995, called it among the top 100 of Cezanne’s 805 existing paintings.