GETTY ACQUIRES CEZANNE; IMPRESSIONIST MASTER'S PAINTING JOINS SMALL, SELECT COLLECTION.

Byline: Reed Johnson Staff Writer

Signaling its continued pursuit of high-priced, premodern paintings, the J. Paul Getty Museum has acquired a late-career masterpiece by the French artist Paul Cezanne.

Purchased for an undisclosed sum from a private collection, the painting, ``Young Italian Woman Leaning on Her Elbow,'' will be on display at the Brentwood museum beginning Thursday.

Museum director John Walsh said the newly acquired work, painted between 1895 and 1900, would complement the Getty's small but select collection of late 19th-century European paintings, which includes important works by Vincent van Gogh, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, James Ensor and others.

While the Getty declined to reveal what it paid for the Cezanne, Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterworks consistently fetch sums in the tens of millions of dollars, among the highest for any artworks. Two weeks ago, a Cezanne still life, ``Earthenware Jug'' (1893), brought $16.5 million at auction in New York. In March, Las Vegas casino entrepreneur Steve Wynn paid $35.2 million at auction for ``Landscape, Island of the Grande Jatte'' (1884) by Cezanne's contemporary, Georges Seurat.

Although the Getty does allot a certain undisclosed proportion of its budget for acquisitions, major art purchases normally are not counted against that amount.

Getty officials also would not say from whom the painting was acquired, but confirmed that at one time it was owned by the Bakwin family of Massachusetts, one of America's leading Cezanne collectors.

The Getty's painting depicts a young woman seated at a table on which she braces her right elbow, cupping her cheek in her hand in melancholy repose. She wears the traditional garb of women in the south of France in that period: a white blouse with full sleeves and a yellow scarf, tucked into a gathered skirt of intense blue. On the table is spread a colorful cloth that appears in both still-life and figural compositions by Cezanne from the same period.

Said to be uncomfortable around women, Cezanne painted relatively few female models. When he did, they often were depicted as seemingly inanimate elements in his still lifes, lacking the psychological dimension of ``Young Italian Woman.''

The new acquisition, which museum officials say is in excellent condition, joins three oil paintings and one watercolor by Cezanne in the Getty Museum's collections.

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Photo: French painter Paul Cezanne's ``Young Italian Woman Leaning on Her Elbow'' dates from between 1895 and 1900.