The Three Skulls, ca. 1898

  • Paul Cézanne, French, 1839-1906

Oil on canvas

  • Unframed: 13 3/4 × 24 in. (34.9 × 61 cm)
  • 20 × 30 × 2 7/8 inches (50.8 × 76.2 × 7.3 cm)

Bequest of Robert H. Tannahill

70.163

On View

  • Modern, Level 2, Central

Department

European Modern Art to 1970

(Ambroise Vollard [1866-1939], Paris, France)

1935, (Galerie E. Bignou, New York, New York, USA)

1938-1940, sold by (Angus Whyte Gallery, Washington, D.C., USA)

1940, puchased by Robert H. Tannahill [1893-1969] (Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, USA) [for $12,500]

1970-present, bequest to the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

Paul Cézanne. Exh. cat., Bignou Gallery. New York, 1936, cat. 26 (ill.). Venturi, L. Cézanne. Paris, 1936, vol. 1, p. 338, no. 1567; vol. 2, pl. 396. Venturi, L. "Sûr les dernières années de Cézanne." Minotaure, no. 9 (1936): (fig. 1). Bourgeois, S. "A Vivid Panorama of Cézanne." Art News (November 7, 1936): pp. 8-10, 22 (ill.). Magazine of Art. December 1936, p. 826 (ill.). "A Cezanne Exhibition." Burlington Magazine (1937): pp. 44-45 (ill.). Vollard, A. Paul Cézanne: His Life and Art. New York, 1937, pl. 8. Cézanne. Exh. cat., Gallery Alex Reid and Lefevre. London, 1937, no. 24. Twentieth Century French Masters. Exh. cat., Whyte Gallery. Washington, D.C., 1938, cat. 2 (ill.). Robinson, F. "Two Works by Paul Cézanne." Bulletin of the DIA 20, no. 4 (1941): pp. 31-32. Laporte, P. "Cézanne and Whitman." Magazine of Art 37, no. 6 (October 1944): p. 224 (ill.). Grigaut, P.L. Two Sides of the Metal. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1954, pp. 54, 56, cat. 103 (ill.). Cézanne Watercolors. Exh. cat., Knoedler Galleries. New York, 1963, p. 53. The Robert Hudson Tannahill Bequest to the Detroit Institute of Arts. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1970, pp. 9, 15, 27, 37 (ill.). Cummings, F. "Tannahill Taste." Art News 69 (May 1970): p. 33 (ill.). Cummings, F. and C. Elam, eds. Illustrated Handbook of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1971, p. 161. Reff, T. "Painting and Theory in the Final Decade." Cézanne: The Late Work. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art and Museum of Fine Arts. New York and Houston 1977, pp. 13-53, pp. 32-33, pl. 153. [as ca. 1902.] Shiff. R. "Seeing Cézanne." Critical Inquiry 4 (Summer 1978): (fig. 6), pp. 769-808, pp. 782, 784, 795, 805-06. Irving Penn Recent Still Life. Exh. cat., Marlborough Gallery, Inc. New York, 1982, p. 4 (ill.). Reff, T. "Cézanne: The Severed Head and the Skull." Arts Magazine 58, no. 2 (October 1983): p. 99 (fig. 18). Shiff, R. Cézanne and the End of Impressionism. Chicago and London, 1984, pp. 191-193; 212-213, (figs. 42, 52). 100 Masterworks from the Detroit Institute of Arts. New York, 1985, p. 17 (fig. 10). Rewald, J. Cézanne, a Biography. New York, 1986, p. 264. Kendall, R., ed. Cézanne by Himself. London, 1988, p. 250 (ill.). Darragon, É. Cézanne. Paris, 1995 no. 93, pp 83-85 (ill.). Cézanne. Exh. cat., Grand Palais, Tate Gallery, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. Paris, London, and Philadelphia, 1995, pp. 491, 493 (fig. 1), cat. nos. 212-217. [as ca. 1898-1900]. Rewald, J., W. Feilchenfeldt, and J. Warman. The Paintings of Paul Cézanne, A Catalogue Raisonné. New York, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 492-493, no. 821; vol. 2, p. 286 (ill.). [as ca. 1898-1900.] Cézanne and Japan. Exh. cat., Yokohama Museum of Art and Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art. Yokohama and Nagoya, 1999, pp. 138-139, cat. 90 (ill.). Fell, D. Cézanne's Garden. New York, 2003, p. 88 (ill.). Picasso et les maîtres. Exh. cat., Grand Palais. Paris, 2008, p. 279 (ill.). Borchardt-Hume, Achim, Gloria Groom, Caitlin Haskell, and Natalia Sidlina, eds. Cezanne. Exh. cat., The Art Institute of Chicago and the Tate. New Haven and London, 2022, p. 212 (ill. cat. no. 142).

Paul Cézanne, The Three Skulls, ca. 1898, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Bequest of Robert H. Tannahill, 70.163.