Cezanne Enriches L.A. Landscape : The Deal: ‘Sous Bois’ (‘Under the Trees’) comes to LACMA after a legal tussle with the Wallis Foundation. It hasn’t been seen by the public in 30 years.

The art-auction boom went bust three years ago, but the aftershocks linger on.

Consider the County Museum of Art’s latest acquisition, “Sous Bois” (“Under the Trees”), a major landscape painted in 1893 by French artist Paul Cezanne. In terms of quality, visual appeal, significance to the collection and estimated value (around $13 million), the Cezanne is a landmark acquisition.

“This is a painting that will be cherished, a painting that people will come here to see,” museum director Michael Shapiro said of the artwork, which went on view Friday in LACMA’s European art galleries.

But “Sous Bois”--which was purchased at an undisclosed price from the museum’s Wallis Foundation Fund, in honor of the late film producer Hal B. Wallis--is also a sharp reminder of the art-market frenzy that removed long-term loans of valuable artworks from museums and put them on the auction block.

Wallis, who died in 1986, was a trustee at the County Museum of Art for 20 years. He bequeathed one painting, Paul Gauguin’s 1886 “The Field of Derout-Lollichon,” to the museum and left the rest of his Impressionist art collection to a family foundation.

The foundation in 1987 placed the collection at the museum, under an arrangement that the lenders called a “permanent loan.” “It’s the next thing to an outright gift,” Earl A. (Rusty) Powell III, then director of the museum, said when the loan was announced.

But as Impressionist art prices escalated, foundation directors decided to sell the collection and use the proceeds to benefit charities, including the Eisenhower Hospital in Rancho Mirage. The artworks, which were the foundation’s primary assets, had become so valuable that it seemed “a little risky not to sell them,” said Brent Wallis, the son of the collector and president of the foundation.

Christie’s New York scheduled an auction of the eight most valuable Wallis paintings on June 10, 1989. The auction house predicted that the paintings would bring in excess of $20 million; they actually sold for a total of $39.6 million. Additional, less expensive works from the collection were sold in subsequent auctions.

When the foundation removed the Wallis collection from LACMA, Powell expressed dismay but said the museum had no legal grounds to protest.

Shortly after the auction, however, the museum discovered that Wallis had signed instructions to trustees of his estate ordering that the best works from his collection be permanently loaned to LACMA or a similar institution. The museum filed suit, charging the Wallis Foundation with fraud and breach of contract and seeking $39.6 million, the amount realized from the auction. The suit was settled out of court in 1991. The settlement established the Wallis Foundation Fund at LACMA and stipulated that the money be used to acquire 19th-Century French artworks, in the taste of Hal B. Wallis. Under terms of the agreement, the museum cannot reveal the amount of money in the fund or the price of acquisitions, but officials have indicated that most of the money was spent on the landscape.

Cezanne’s paintings have been sold for as much as $17.3 million at auction. A $16-million sale of seven small Cezannes from the estate of French industrialist Auguste Pellerin was a major event of last fall’s auction season in London.

The seminal artist--who linked classical structure with contemporary realism--was definitely on curator Philip Conisbee’s mind when he went shopping with the Wallis Foundation Fund. “Cezanne was high on my wish list because he is a great artist, for me one of the greatest artists of all time,” Conisbee said. “I looked at everything that was available for about a year. Within our budget, this was the outstanding work, without question. As soon as I saw it and brought it to the museum, everyone knew this was it.”

The painting arrived at the museum last summer, during Powell’s tenure, but the board delayed its decision until October when Shapiro took over as director. “I don’t know if it’s Rusty Powell’s last acquisition or Michael Shapiro’s first. It’s both,” Conisbee said.

“Sous Bois,” the largest landscape painted by Cezanne, harks back to the work of Gustave Courbet and Claude Lorraine, but it also suggests 20th-Century developments, Conisbee said. “It anticipates the landscapes of German Expressionists such as Heckel and Kirchner. The color--the reds and greens, lilacs and yellows--looks forward to Fauvist painting.

“Cezanne’s carefully hatched handling was admired by Braque and Picasso in 1907-08,” he said, noting that some of the hatched passages resemble contemporary artist Jasper Johns’ work.

“One feature that I like very much is that while he seems to be experimenting with forms and ideas in painting the trees and foliage, at the same time the painting feels completely resolved. Many of his works have an unfinished look,” Conisbee said.

“Under the Trees” is in “wonderful condition,” according to conservator Joseph Fronek. He removed varnish and a lining (which flattened out the texture), but no restoration was needed.

“It’s so fresh and lively, it feels as if it was painted yesterday,” Conisbee said. One reason is that it was in the collection of the artist’s dealer, Ambroise Vollard, until the 1930s, when it was sold to New York collector Harold Bakwin. The painting remained in the Bakwin family until LACMA bought it, through New York dealers John and Paul Herring.

The work is known to scholars, but it has not been displayed in public since 1963, in an exhibition at Wildenstein & Co. Gallery in Manhattan.

“Sous Bois” fills a gap in the museum’s collection--between Cezanne’s “Boy With Straw Hat,” a sketchy portrait, and “Still Life With Cherries and Peaches,” which is on loan to an exhibition in Germany. Conisbee has hung the new acquisition with three Cezanne watercolors loaned by Lucille Ellis Simon.

“This is a major addition to our permanent collection,” Shapiro said. “And it offers testimony that in these days of diminishing expectations, we can hope to acquire wonderful, important works of art. It’s a heartening message.”