In the context of View of Auvers-sur-Oise, explore the Provenance of the History.
French bureaucrat Victor Chocquet, a collector and advocate for Impressionism, bought the painting. After his death in 1891, it was bequeathed to his wife Marie. In 1899 the Chocquet collection was exhibited at Galerie Georges Petit in Paris, under the title Auvers. In turn it was purchased by another collector of Impressionist works, Thadée Natanson.Natanson auctioned his collection, including View of Auvers-sur-oise, at the Hôtel Drouot in 1908. It passed that way to another prominent collector, German publisher Bruno Cassirer. He loaned it to his cousin Paul for a 1921 Berlin exhibit of Cézanne works in private German collections; it was titled Ansicht an Aix. Bruno made the painting part of an extended loan to the Kunsthaus Zürich, which exhibited it in 1933 as Regenlandschaft. On another loan to a Swiss museum, the Kunsthalle Basel. This time it was known as Bei Auvers.
Bruno's daughter Sophie inherited it after his death in 1941, by which time the family had moved to Oxford following Nazi persecution. She kept it in the family's hands and did not loan it out. Upon the deaths of her husband Richard Rudolf Walzer in 1975, followed by her own four years later, the estate incurred a large inheritance tax bill. The painting was accepted by the British government in lieu of inheritance tax to become part of the collection at the Ashmolean, which lists it in its catalogue under the English title A View of buildings in a valley in the Ile-de-France. In 1998 the Ashmolean loaned it to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in Sydney, for its Classic Cézanne exhibit; in this it was given the French title Groupe de maisons, paysage d'île de France, the title used in the artist's current catalogue raisonné.
France Berlin Georges Petit Hôtel Drouot British government Kunsthaus Zürich Impressionism Oxford Victor Chocquet catalogue raisonné inheritance tax Thadée Natanson Galerie Georges Petit Sydney Paris Paul in lieu of inheritance tax Richard Rudolf Walzer Bruno Cassirer Art Gallery of New South Wales Kunsthalle Basel estate