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Painted with loose, visible brushstrokes mostly in shades of spring green, sky blue, straw yellow, and ivory white, four couples lock in intense embraces across a landscape in front of a body of water in this nearly square painting. Trees rise up and off the top edges to both sides of the canvas, and a band of green grass runs across the width. Just beyond, a body of pale blue water extends to the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up the composition. Off-white clouds swirl against the topaz-blue sky above. Three pairs of people are spaced evenly across the grass, close to us, and the fourth pair are on a steep rise to our right. The people all have pale or slightly peachy skin, and most of them have honey-yellow hair. The painting technique is loose throughout, making many details, especially facial features and some body parts, indistinct. Near the lower left corner, a nude person crouches on the ground with an arm raised overhead while another person, nude except for a few swipes of brick red to suggest a cape, stands above with one arm raised. At the center of the painting, two people with long, blond hair seem to embrace, though the one farther from us is partially or wholly lifted off the ground. To our right, a tanned person kneels over a pale, nude woman with rounded breasts and hips. Their heads blend together, possibly to suggest that they kiss, and one of them has black hair. They hold hands locked overhead. Dark gray strokes nearby in the lower right corner of the painting suggest a dog leaping at this couple. The fourth pair is on a sand-colored rise, about halfway up the right edge of the composition. They are even more loosely painted, but one person seems to grab onto the other as they tip toward the ground or water below.

Paul Cézanne

The Battle of Love, c. 1880

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 38 x 46 cm (14 15/16 x 18 1/8 in.)

framed: 55.9 x 63.5 x 8.9 cm (22 x 25 x 3 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman

Accession Number

1972.9.2

Artists / Makers

Paul Cézanne (artist) French, 1839 - 1906

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Provenance

(Ambroise Vollard [1867-1939], Paris), by 1895; acquired by Pierre-Auguste Renoir [1841-1919], Cagnes; re-purchased by (Ambroise Vollard, Paris), by 1912;[1] sold to Dr. Gottlieb Friedrich Reber [1880-1959], Barmen, Germany, and Lausanne, by 1913;[2] sold May 1931 to Marie N. Harriman [1903-1970] and W. Averell Harriman [1891-1986], New York [Marie Harriman Gallery];[3] W. Averell Harriman Foundation, New York; gift 1972 to NGA.

[1] The early provenance of the painting is described in the literature in different ways: that Cézanne "may have given" it to Renoir (Cézanne, exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1996: no. 65), or that Mme Renoir purchased the painting from Vollard (John Rewald, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne. A Catalogue Raisonné, 2 vols., New York, 1996: 1:no. 456).

[2] Several sources, including the Harriman collection records (in NGA curatorial files) include the Paris dealer Paul Rosenberg in the provenance either before or after Reber's name. However, a shipping receipt dated 8 July 1912 in the Vollard archives lists three paintings sent to Reber, including "Cezanne baigneuses" that is probably The Battle of Love (kindly provided by Jayne Warman, see correspondence of January 2006 in NGA curatorial files). The painting was exhibited with Reber's collection in 1913 in Darmstadt and Berlin.

[3] According to Harriman collection records, in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Harriman Foundation, W. Averell
Marie Harriman Gallery
Reber, Gottlieb Friedrich, Dr.
Renoir, Auguste
Vollard, Ambroise
Vollard, Ambroise

Exhibition History

1913: Sonderausstellungen deutscher Privatsammlungen. II: Gemaelde-Sammlung G.F. Reber, Barmen, Städtischen Austellungsgebäude, Mathildenhöhhe, Darmstadt, 1913, no. 14, as Lutteurs amoureaux.

1933: French Paintings, Marie Harriman Gallery, New York, 1933, no. 8

1936: Cezanne - Gauguin, The Toledo Museum of Art, 1936, no. 18, repro.

1936: Paul Cezanne, André Derain, Walt Kuhn, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Marie Harriman Gallery, New York, 1936, no. 2

1937: Paul Cézanne: Exhibition of Paintings, Water-colors, Drawings and Prints, San Francisco Museum of Art, 1937, no. 6, repro., as Figure Composition (La Lutte d'Amour)

1939: Cezanne Centennial Exhibition, Marie Harriman Gallery, New York, 1939, no. 3

1947: Loan Exhibition of Cezanne for the Benefit of the New York Infirmary, Wildenstein, New York, 1947, no. 12, repro.

1952: Cézanne: Paintings, Watercolors & Drawings, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1952, no. 19, repro.

1953: Monticelli et le Baroque Provençal, Musée de L'Orangerie, Paris, 1953, no. 18

1955: Albany Institute of History and Art, 1955, no cat.

1956: Exposition pour commémorer le cinquantenaire de la mort de Cézanne Pavillon de Vendôme, Aix-en-Provence, 1956, no. 22

1958: Summer loan exhibition, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, July-August 1958, no cat.

1959: Cezanne Exhibition, Wildenstein, New York, 1959, no. 12, repro.

1961: Exhibition of the Marie and Averell Harriman Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1961, unnumbered catalogue, repro. 12

1974: Exposition Cézanne, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo; Municipal Museum, Kyoto; Cultural Center, Fukouka, 1974, no. 21

1974: Loan for display with permanent collection, Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, 1974

1980: Fifty Years of French Painting: The Emergence of Modern Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, 1980, no. 15, repro.

1981: Small Paintings from Famous Collections, The Taft Museum, Cincinnati, 1981, repro.

1984: Paul Cézanne, Museo Español de Arte Contemporaneo, Madrid, 1984, no. 26, repro.

1988: The Pastoral Landscape: The Modern Vision, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1988-1989, no. 116, fig. 213.

1989: Paul Cezanne: Die Badenden, Kunstmuseum, Basel, 1989, no. 41, repro.

1992: From El Greco to Cézanne: Masterpieces of European Painting from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and The Metroplitan Museum of Art, New York, National Gallery of Greece, Athens, 1992-1993, no. 62, repro.

1996: Obras Maestras de la National Gallery of Art de Washington, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, 1996-1997, unnumbered catalogue, 150-151, color repro.

1999: Around Impressionism: French Paintings from the National Gallery of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1999, no cat.

1999: Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 1999, no. 51, repro.

2006: Cezanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant Garde, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 2006-2007, no. 34, repro.

2008: Cézanne & Giacometti: Paths of Doubt, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, 2008, no. 15, repro.

2011: Cézanne et Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, 2011-2012, no. 52, repro.

2013: Intimate Impressionism from the National Gallery of Art, Museo dell'Ara Pacis Augustae, Rome (exhibition title in this venue: Impressionist Gems); California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo, Seattle Art Museum, 2013-2016.

2015: Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art; National Gallery, London, 2015-2016, no. 20, repro. (shown only in London).

2019: Renoir: The Body, The Senses, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown; Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 2019-2020.

Bibliography

1936: Venturi, Lionello. Cezanne, son art, son oeuvre. 2 vols. Paris, 1936.

1970: Orienti 1970, no.271.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 62, repro.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 499, no. 741, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 83, repro.

1993: Adams, Laurie Schneider. Art and Psychoanalysis. New York, 1993: 244-245, fig. 92.

1996: Rewald, John. The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: a catalogue raisonné. 2 vols. New York, 1996:no. 456, repro.

1997: Impressionist and Modern Art, Part I, Sotheby's, New York, 1997, p. 40, repro.

1997: Kelder, Diane. The Great Book of French Impressionism, 1997, no. 382, repro.

2001: Kropmanns, Peter, and Uwe Fleckner. "Von Kontinentaler Bedeutung: Gottlieb Freidrich Reber und seine Sammlungen." In Die Moderne und ihre Sammler. Andrea Pophanken and Felix Billeter, eds. Berlin, 2001: 387.

2009: Picasso Cézanne. Exh. cat. Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence, 2009: 134 fig. 1, 137.

2013: Dombrowski, André. Cézanne, Murder, and Modern Life. Berkeley, 2013: 239-240, color plate 16.