Cézanne – Flowers in a Blue Vase

This painting comes with a curious backstory. Paul Guillaume once bought a Cézanne titled Flowers and Fruit, and years later his wife, Domenica, acquired this painting, Flowers in a Blue Vase. The two works ended up in the Orangerie separately — until 1992, when the museum's curator, Michel Hoog, discovered that they had originally been one single painting.

Look closely at the vase on the left side of this canvas: it's the very same vase that appears in Flowers and Fruit. The two works were once a single large, unfinished canvas that — being both oversized and incomplete — proved hard to sell, so it's believed a dealer cut it in two and sold the pieces separately. The two halves have since found their way back to each other here at the Orangerie. If both happen to be on view at once, it's a rare treat; if only one is displayed, the accompanying photograph lets you take in the other alongside it.