Aix-en-Provence is at its best at this time of year, all perfect weather and beautiful light.

But if, by chance, you need another reason to go, then how’s this? Tomorrow, Aix sees the opening of an exhibition that brings together — for the first time in a standalone show — two of the world’s favourite painters, Picasso and Cézanne.

The city’s Musée Granet has gathered together 100 works by the two artists and, with the help of loans from the likes of the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, and the Hermitage, in St Petersburg, will be exploring the influence of the master of Aix over the master of Malaga.

Cézanne, who was born in Aix and spent most of his life in Provence, was 42 years older than Picasso, and never met his disciple. But the pairing is so obvious, it beggars belief that ­nobody’s tried it before.

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It was Cézanne’s work that inspired Picasso and his brother in arms, Braque, to focus on the substance of things rather than their appearance from a single viewpoint — and in doing so, they invented cubism.

Picasso made no secret of the debt. “Cézanne is the father of us all,” he said soon after the French painter’s death, in 1906. It was a relationship that revolutionised modern art.

Such is the excitement generated by the show that Catherine Hutin, the daughter of Jacqueline Roque, Picasso’s second wife, has been persuaded to open the site of Picasso’s grave to the public for the first time to accompany the event. He’s buried in front of the entrance at the Château de Vauvenargues, eight miles east of Aix, and the site has been jealously guarded for 36 years.

A sign at the front gate gives you some idea how hard that’s been. “Le château n’est pas à visiter,” it begs. Originally, only 40,000 places were allocated for the limited opening, but they’ve already sold out —so, each morning, the Musée Granet will be selling an extra 70 tickets on a first come, first served basis.

Don’t be heartbroken if you don’t get one. Vauvenargues is a lovely spot in summer, cool, green and tranquil, and if you go on a sunny day, you’ll recognise the scene immediately: the chateau sits beneath one of Cézanne’s favourite subjects, the Mont Ste Victoire.

The chateau itself, however, played only a short part in Picasso’s life, and the decision to bury him here was not his own. (It was made by Roque, because the autho­rities at Mougins, where the artist died, wouldn’t allow a private funeral.)

No, the real treat here is the exhibition. Clearly, getting the big museums to part with some of their most prized possessions wasn’t easy, and the show is short on top-notch Picassos. Still, there is some gorgeous painting on offer — in Cézanne’s sump­tuously coloured Harlequin of 1888-90, and Picasso’s bravura depiction of Jacqueline sitting with a cat on her lap, painted when he was in his eighties.

There is a genuine coup de théâtre too, the kind of curating that will be remembered for years to come — the pairing of Picasso’s 1909 picture Woman with a Mandolin and Cézanne’s portrait of Gustave Geffroy sitting in his library, completed 13 years earlier. The former is an early cubist masterpiece; and suddenly, seen in such company, the Cézanne painting looks like one too.

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