Jeff Sexton on Storytelling - The Monday Morning Memo

“Because his wife refused to miss a dress fitting, she missed his death instead. He painted to the last, a portrait in profile of his gardener sitting in a green light, with a sprawling shadow cast on the wall behind him. His son too arrived too late, preferring with his mother the rich life of Paris. Then, thinking his fame wouldn’t last and heavy in debt, they quickly sold his paintings, foolishly reckless in their acceptance of small sums. ‘You see,’ his wife told Matisse, ‘Cézanne couldn’t paint. He didn’t have the talent to complete his pictures.’ Her fear cost her a fortune. At the very end of his life Cézanne wrote, ‘Long live those who have the love of color – true representatives of light and air.'”

- Stephen Dobyns, “Cézanne and the Love of Color” from Body Traffic

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