The Tate Modern museum will rename a Cezanne painting to gloss over racial terminology as part of plans for a new exhibition on the “father of modern art”.
More than 20 works never previously exhibited in the UK will form the core of a “once in a generation” show covering the prolific career of the French painter and his relevance to modern artists and audiences.
To cater for modern audiences, the Tate has decided to rename one of Cezanne’s canvasses, known as The Negro Scipio.
The 1867 work depicting a black man resting on a stool will simply be called “Scipio” during its time at the museum, as curators brush aside the potentially jarring nomenclature.
The canvas will be used by Tate experts to probe the political context of Cezanne’s work as part of an unusual approach to a painter best known for his still lives of fruit.
Michael Raymond, assistant curator at the gallery, explained that this approach would remove any barriers to enjoying the artwork and allow visitors to focus on its subject.
Focus on the sitter
He said: “This one has traditionally been know as Le Negre Scipion, or The Negro Scipio.
“Galleries in France have experimented with removing racial terms to focus on the sitter. We’ve decided not to include it, and to focus on the person in the painting.”
The artwork was once owned by Claude Monet, the Impressionist painter, and is now held by the S？o Paulo Museum of Art.
Mr Raymond said that while Paul Cezanne was normally considered to have painted his vivid still lives of apples and dreamy landscapes of his native Provence “in a political vacuum”, the Tate show will have greater focus on the painter’s political context, including France’s oscillations between empire and republic, and the Dreyfus Affair.
Catalogue information on the ordinarily “apolitical” artist will focus unusually on the social climate in which artworks such as The Negro Scipio were created, including contemporary debates over American Civil War and slavery.
Curators have said that the exhibition planned for autumn - which will include more than 80 paintings, drawings and watercolours - will demonstrate “how Cezanne is relevant to the modern world”.
The decision to address the racial context and terminology connected to his paintings follows work by the Musee d’Orsay in Paris to temporarily re-brand artworks with race-related titles or subjects, with Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s Portrait of a Negress retitled Madeleine after its sitter.
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has gone further by permanently renaming artworks with racial terminology in their titles, with Simon Maris' painting Young Negro Girl re-branded asYoung Girl Holding a Fan.
Dresden State Art Collections was also accused of erasing the past by seeking to change potentially offensive titles, but Mr Raymond has said that abridging the titles of Cezanne’s works would not be rewriting history as the painter himself did not often name his paintings.
Exemplary works that will be displayed by Tate Modern include an example of his famous Still Life with Bottle and Basket of Apples and his Provencal idyll Mont Sainte-Victoire which have never been seen in the UK before.
They are among 22 works set to be displayed in Britain for the first time after years of preparation resulted in successful loans from galleries across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
Frances Morris, the Tate Modern director, has described the show as a “once in a generation” chance to witness the genius of the “pivotal figure in the direction of modern art”.
Cezanne, who lived from1839 to 1906, was born in Provence and set out to “astonish Paris”, but later returned from the capital to pursue studies of his home region. He is often known as the “artists’ artist” due to his skill, and is seen as an important bridge between Impressionism and modern art.