After his death, the studio, closed and forgotten, went to sleep with the every day life of the painter. His possessions remained   there: painting materials, clothing, objects for his still lifes.  In 1921, Marcel Joannon – known as Marcel Provence – a reviver of Provençal verse, purchased it. Fervent admirer of the former owner, he only lived in the downstairs. He left the studio upstairs just as Cezanne had left it, determined to preserve a "precious heritage, the spiritual richness attached to these wall, to this garden".

"Everything evoked so strongly the presence of the painter that I was disconcerted," noted Adrien Chappuis after visiting the studio. "My usual understanding of the artist suddenly seemed out of place. The image of Cézanne conceived through his paintings and books – it all disappeared with the shock of the presence of this very simple and slightly irritable man, who worked, lived, suffered here".

From then on the property of the Aix Tourist Office, the Cézanne Studio Museum welcomes visitors who wish to bring themselves closer to the man who was Cézanne. This is a place where the painter’s human and everyday simplicity still lives on. The Paul Cézanne Studio does not house any of the artist’s works. It is Cézanne himself that we come to see.