Cezanne Plus One

I had made a sketch of a small Cezanne painting of bathers while at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. At least I think that was the museum - it was quite some time ago and I didn’t note the location in my sketchbook. Regardless of the source, this sketch has now become the next one to alter and save as I go through my drawings from travels past and cull the usable ones from those that I will discard.


Since pragmatism rules the day for me, I cut my little Cezanne sketch out of my notebook leaving an 8" x 10" space so that it would fit a standard size matt. This, of course, left blank spaces around the composition for me to creatively fill in. So as I worked over the original conte crayon sketch with my velvety gray and black pastels I added an extra cypress tree and other extensions of an imagined landscape. As I worked, the angular and cubed nature of the Cezanne bathers receded and became increasingly rounded and sinuous until the drawing bore little resemblance to Cezanne. Might I now claim it as a Kozachek derivative of a Cezanne?