Before he discovered the revolutionary works of Courbet and Manet, the young painter from Aix submitted to a strict apprenticeship. It was an especially difficult period for him, partly because, for the first few months that he was in Paris, he was lonely and unknown and partly because he had chosen a sombre palette ΓÇô paints for ΓÇÿdeath and mourningΓÇÖ, as Lawrence Gowing called it. His studies from life made his fellow students at the Atelier Suisse laugh, and they kept him out of their societies.
In 1863, accompanied by Zola, he visited the Salon des Refus┼╜s and saw the works of the avant-garde artists whose works were not admitted to the Salon. He was particularly struck by a large canvas by Manet (now known as Le D┼╜jeuner sur lΓÇÖherbe) showing people in contemporary dress having a picnic on the grass, a work that parodied contemporary art practices. ManetΓÇÖs reworking of traditional themes inspired C┼╜zanne to attempt several compositions with figures in landscapes, including his own version of ΓÇÿluncheon on the grassΓÇÖ, pastoral scenes, the temptation of St Anthony and bathers. Manet was his first master, but C┼╜zanne also admired Daumier, Delacroix and Courbet. Although he was wary of being influenced by other painters, which he felt could paralyse artists, perhaps for an entire generation, he could not wholly escape CourbetΓÇÖs influence in the 1860s and 1870s. Matisse commented on this: ΓÇÿC┼╜zanne did not have to fear PoussinΓÇÖs influence because he was certain not to take on PoussinΓÇÖs forms, but when Courbet got through to him, as he did to most painters at that time, C┼╜zanneΓÇÖs technique reflected CourbetΓÇÖs too strongly, and C┼╜zanneΓÇÖs expression was limited by it.ΓÇÖ
C┼╜zanne also loved tenebrism, which he found echoed in the works of Jos┼╜ de Ribera and Francisco de ZurbarΓÇín. His first works were sombre and represented violent events such as murders, rapes, abductions and orgies, which contrasted strongly with the pastoral scenes inspired by his romantic vision of the world. These gloomy works were an outlet for his dreams and fantasies, an illustration of a world of unsatisfied passions that fed on literature. C┼╜zanne knew BaudelaireΓÇÖs poem ΓÇÿUne charogneΓÇÖ (ΓÇÿCarrionΓÇÖ) by heart, and he enjoyed depicting the sudden brutality that could arise between the delights of love and the horrors of death. Working in thick paint and using his palette knife to define shapes, he moulded his subjects with the flat of the blade and applied slabs of colour to indicate light. This rich, supple language was drawn from CourbetΓÇÖs art, but it portends the main elements of his mature style: shapes moulded by colour, dark outlines and the breaking down of traditional perspective. The works of C┼╜zanneΓÇÖs youth, even though they are sometimes thought of as romantic, are characterized by the vigorous use of light. A great admirer of Delacroix, C┼╜zanne used chiaroscuro to convey the drama of his subject matter. But he quickly abandoned this technique, and, after the 1870s, he gradually gave up the thick, vigorously applied impasto, which he, rather humorously, called ΓÇÿcouillardeΓÇÖ (ΓÇÿballsyΓÇÖ). Little by little he moved away from painting the subjects that particularly appealed to him ΓÇô images of orgies, murders and rapes ΓÇô and began to work on depicting, in an as yet ill-defined way, something beyond the mere illustration of well-worn subjects.
CROSS-ROADS, RUE REMY AT AUVERS
During his first stay at Auvers-sur-Oise in 1873, C┼╜zanne painted several views of this picturesque village and its old cottages with their tired roofs and its houses with their glowing red tiles. Sometimes he would walk some distance away in order to catch a general view of the houses and surrounding coutryside: sometimes he would set up his easel in a small street of the village to capture the peaceful spectacle unrolling before his eyes. He settled in rue R┼╜my where stood the house of Dr. Gachet, although it is not shown here as he has deliberately devoided this painting of all familiar signs and human presence. Whilst Pissarro always included a figure in his landscapes, C┼╜zanne excludes all men and animals from them. He was not endeavouring to fix on the canvas a glimpse of his motif at a particular moment, but rather was interested in its timeless elements such as the volumes of the houses, the rendering of space through imbricated planes which would indicate depth without using the traditional illusion to give the perspective.
At that period when the painter was working almost daily beside Pissarro whom he regarded “as a father (…) almost a god”, his technique was influenced by the Impressionists. He was using fragmented brush strokes weaving in the colours and painting fleecy skies though the tendency to use very geometrical brush strokes characteristic of CŽzanne's style was already noticeable in this landscape.
CEZANNE'S MILIEU - STILL LIFE WITH MEDALLION OF PHILIPPE SOLARI
Probably painted in the early 1870s, this still life evokes through symbols the artistic world of the previous decade in which C┼╜zanne had evolved.
Sculpture is represented by a plaster medallion, a self-portrait of his childhood friend Philippe Solari, and Literature by an earthenware inkwell and a quill -probably Zola's- who was a friend of both the painter and the sculptor. In this allegorical setting Cezanne's own art might be represented by the two apples in the foreground. A parchment held by a ribbon, displayed in a prominent position on the crumpled draperies, is probably an allusion to the success the young artists were hoping to achieve. This symbolic still life with its classical composition, its thick impasto and its Baroque curvaceous lines, is still strongly marked by the expressive style of C┼╜zanne's first manner.
Still Life with Pewter Jug
CŽzanne spent most of 1865 in Paris, where he continued his training, working on life studies at the Atelier Suisse in the mornings and, in the afternoons, visiting galleries where he studied the works of the old masters he admired. The Spanish school of painting was in vogue during the Second Empire, and Zola commented on its role in the development of CŽzanne’s style. In 1865 Marius Roux, in an article about the artists from Aix-en-Provence who formed part of Zola’s circle, noted: ‘M. CŽzanne is one of the good pupils who is come to Paris from Aix. … A great admirer of Ribeira [sic] and Zurbar‡n, our painter’s art nevertheless springs entirely from within himself.’
Mary Magdalene or "Sorrow"
This larger than nature figure represents Mary Magdalene, the repentant saint who lived the life of a recluse on Mont Sainte- Baume. The dramatic nature of this character personifying Sorrow is rendered not only by the presence of traditional symbols (skulls, pall embroidered with silver tears), but also by the vigorous, almost brutal treatment of the paint and the wrong contrast of colour and light. Originally, this painting was the counterpart of another religious scene representing Christ in Limbo, which C┼╜zanne had painted after an engraving he had made after the picture by Sebastiano del Piombo. This demure and sober pair adorned the lounge of Jas de Bouffan. Louis -Auguste C┼╜zanne had allowed his son to decorate the walls of that reception room as he pleased. This gesture was not as generous as it might appear for, according to the testimony of the present owner of the house, that lounge was used to sstore the produce from the farm which was part of the estate.
Still-life with onions
C┼╜zanne often introduced aubergines and onions into his compositions because of their shiny, silky skins and deep colours.
CŽzanne needed a considerable number of sessions to complete his paintings and this is probably why there are fewer still lifes with flowers than compositions with fruit. The poet Joachim Gasquet records him as having said: ‘Fruit are faithful. … They like having their portraits painted. They sit there as if they were asking forgiveness for changing colour. They exhale their spirit together with their fragrance. They approach you through their scents and talk to you about the fields they have left, the rain that has fed them, the dawns that they have seen. When I use juicy paint to outline the skin of a beautiful peach or the melancholy of an old apple, I catch a glimpse, in the reflections they exchange, of the same faint shadow of renunciation, the same love for the sun, the same memories of dew, of freshness.’
The Card Players
There are no fewer than five painted versions of this card game, with either two or three players, and with or without spectators, as well as numerous preparatory sketches, watercolours and related pictures. C┼╜zanne worked at length on this subject, which is a classic theme of French painting. He would have been aware of The Card Players of the School of Le Nain, which is in the mus┼╜e Granet in Aix-en-Provence. The theme was popular in the seventeenth century, but while earlier painters had sought to represent moral or anecdotal scenes ΓÇô the card-sharp, Luck or a lively tavern interior, for example ΓÇô C┼╜zanne produced a de-dramatized version of the game, which Andr┼╜ Breton described as ΓÇÿhalf tragedy, half farceΓÇÖ. The two players are facing each other across a simple wooden table, which is covered with a cloth or gaming rug. Dispassionate and silent, they look down at the cards in their large, impassive hands. C┼╜zanne had often had opportunities to observe at leisure such games of cards, which were played in the caf┼╜s of the Cours Mirabeau of Aix-en-Provence, where he would go after a dayΓÇÖs work. He does not, however, confine himself to a realistic portrayal of a card game. It is as if he has reduced the event to its most basic elements ΓÇô two players, an anonymous background, no onlookers ΓÇô and just a few descriptive details ΓÇô the clay pipe and a bottle of wine. The sombre nature of the setting gives the players a grandeur reminiscent of the figures in MasaccioΓÇÖs paintings.
Two farm workers from the Jas de Bouffan came to sit in the family home for this scene. They wore their Sunday-best clothes and new hats. The brush strokes that, colour patch after colour patch, were used to build up the painting were wrongly interpreted as stains on the clothes and tablecloth by Andr┼╜ P┼╜rat┼╜, the critic from La Gazette des Beaux-Arts, when he came across the work at the retrospective exhibition of the Salon dΓÇÖAutomne in 1907. Certain of the rightness of his opinion, he considered the work to be a true manifesto of realism in the style of Courbet, and he wrote: ΓÇÿIs it not just like looking through an open window into this shabby caf┼╜, where whiffs of absinthe hang around and where flies have left their marks on the walls?ΓÇÖ C┼╜zanne was, of course, interested in the subject matter ΓÇô it is never wholly absent from his work ΓÇô but its anecdotal aspect was unimportant to him. He was not a genre painter, and he chose only those subjects and places for his works that had a timeless quality.
SELF-PORTRAIT
As we can see by the landscape in the background, this composition was painted in the studio of his friend, the painter Armand Guillaumin. The self-portrait reveals an anxious, almost apprehensive image of the artist. C┼╜zanne was at that time living through a difficult period of his career and life. Despite his attempts to submit, year after year, his paintings to the Salon's Selection Committee, he was rejected by all the official art establishments, and had become discouraged by the struggle. His private life was not much happier: the clandestine birth of his son made daily life uncomfortable and impoverished the meagre allowance granted by his father. The romantic and passionate artist had given way to a worried albeit maturing individual. C┼╜zanne was about thirty-four years old. The anxious features of his face, half hidden by a thick brown beard, and his baldness, are depicted in a detailed, unembellished manner. The thick paint, applied vigorously in large brush stokes, and patches of colour applied with a palette, further accentuate the gravity of this self-portrait.
Pastoral scene or idyll
CŽzanne’s early works reveal something of his passionate, dreamy nature, but from his youth he made a determined effort to control his temperament. His childhood friend, ƒmile Zola, had lived in Paris for two years when CŽzanne arrived there to study, and Zola set him a strict timetable for his work. ‘From six in the morning until eleven you will go to a studio to paint from life. You will then have lunch, then, between noon and four in the afternoon you will copy a masterpiece of your choice in the Louvre or the Luxembourg.’ This rigorous programme suited the energetic and determined twenty-two-year old, who was nurturing the twin ambitions of entering the ƒcole des Beaux-Arts and of exhibiting at the Salon – the Salon de Bouguereau, as he called it. CŽzanne achieved neither ambition: he was rejected by all the official art establishments, and exhibited in the 1882 Salon only through the intervention of his friend, the painter Antoine Guillemet. In 1870, in an article in L’Album Stock, he explained this antagonism to a journalist. ‘I paint as I see, as I feel – and my feelings are very strong. They feel as I do and they see as I do, but they are timid and produce Salon art.’ His attempts, year after year, to submit his works to the Salon’s selection committee became something of a standing joke. An article in Le Rappel in 1874 noted: ‘No Salon jury would ever even dream of accepting a single work by this painter, who brings his canvases, carrying them on his back like Jesus carrying his cross.’ The barriers between CŽzanne and the art establishment that arose in these tumultuous times were never completely dismantled in his lifetime.
SELF-PORTRAIT
This is the smallest self-portrait painted by C┼╜zanne in the late 1870s. The artist completed it in just a few working sessions and deliberately neglected the finishing of the smock he was wearing to concentrate on a more detailed rendering of the face. The latter appears in all its truth, in a three-quarter-face portrait half concealed in the shade. It is not animated by any definite expression though, and C┼╜zanne was not revealing anything of his inner self. This is not a moral portrait or a snapshot but rather a lucid and thorough study of the artist in front of himself. His features, which he knew very well, having painted many self-portraits, allowed him to study, without the need of a model, the effects of light on the skin and the subtle tones of carnation. Peaceful and well poised, this self-portrait shows the artist when he was approaching forty.
FIVE BATHERS
These five bathers, short and broad-backed, belong to a series of very small sized paintings on the same theme painted by C┼╜zanne. Whether rapid sketches or studies for more ambitious works, these bathing scenes are nevertheless finished works.
The bathers, gathered round the water, form a circle. They are communicating with their eyes and their gestures. The frame of mind and animation which is found here is typical of the genre scenes of that period, such as the ΓÇ£Temptation of St. AnthonyΓÇ¥, and was gradually replaced in his later work by more static compositions. The landscape, built up with long brush strokes, seems undifferentiated and in strong contrast with the bathers's powerfylly drawn bodies and eloquent attitudes. The painter was not interested in a naturalistic rendering of nature. The surroundings of the bathing scene are so vague that it is impossible to decide whether we are in front of a corner of Provence or by a river in the Ile-de-France.
VILLAGE ROAD AT AUVERS
The motif of the turning road which was one of the main subjects in C┼╜zanne's work until the middle of 1880, appeared at the beginning of the 1870s in landscapes of the Pontoise and Auvers-sur-Oise areas. A striking foreshortened ribbon of land leads the eye from the foreground deep into the background of the composition. Nature seems to echo the character of this muddy track: a grey threatening sky emphasises the dramatic atmosphere of the landscape; it is late autum, and the houses with their smokeless chimneys stand out cold and clear-cut against the air, heavy with storm clouds, whilst the bare trees punctuate the composition with their slender twisted silhouettes. This melancholic landscape with its fuliginous colours directly brings to mind some of Pissarro's works of the same period. That gloomy and heavy-hearted atmosphere remains an exception in C┼╜zanne's work.
BUNCH OF FLOWERS WITH YELLOW DAHLIA
A master at painting apples, C┼╜zanne also gave us remarkable pictures of flowers. He approached this theme during his Impressionist period. This bunch of dahlias, dating from around 1873, shows the influence of Manet, Pissaro and especially of Monticelli. The composition is very simple and rejects all anecdotal detail or symbolic interpretation. The painter focused his attention on the rendering of the texture of the flowers with small, thick brush stokes of rich colour. Renoir related that C┼╜zanne used reproductions and paper flowers to inspire him for his still lifes but the flowers here are so sensuous and the colours so fresh that they seem to exclude that procedure for this painting.
FARMYARD AT AUVERS
By deciding to enclose between two walls the principal motif of his painting, a farmyard, C┼╜zanne brings us as if by trespass, right into the centre of his composition. The walls, like two almost abstract elements put sideways in the picture, far from having any anecdotal value, have a purely formal role -they wedge the motif and constitute a major component in the ΓÇ£poiseΓÇ¥ of the composition, which if we tried to remove one of them, would collapse. This medley of shapes all balacing each other announce the vertiginous landscapes of rocks and forest interiors painted by C┼╜zanne at Bib┼╜mus near Aix-en-Provence at the end of the 1890s. The farm buildings are gathered around a central area where the ground is sloping. The unpleasant feeling of sliding off is fortunately counterbalanced by the presence of the trees near the farm. The elements of this landscape make up a silent theatre where C┼╜zanne tried to capture the inner life of things rather than the movement of living creatures. There is no human or animal presence in the place.
These decisions taken by the painter result in a serious emotional intensity further reflected in harmonies of rich and subtle colours.
LΓÇÖEstaque
Even by the end of the nineteenth century LΓÇÖEstaque was a busy little market town, with around twenty brick and tile manufacturers. Then, it was about ten kilometres from Marseilles, although now it is part of the industrial suburbs of the city. LΓÇÖEstaque is only about thirty kilometres from Aix-en-Provence, and C┼╜zanneΓÇÖs first recorded visit to the town took place in 1864. It is probable, as John Rewald suggests, that for several years before then C┼╜zanneΓÇÖs mother had been renting a fishermanΓÇÖs cottage there during the summer months. The blue waters of the Mediterranean held a strong attraction for the young Paul, and later, in Mes Confidences, he said that swimming was his favourite means of relaxation.
L’Estaque became the refuge to which he escaped from family conflicts. He went there with Hortense Fiquet during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), and it was there that he painted his first outdoor studies: a vertiginous snowscape and a bay in evening light. In 1876 he painted several coastal views for the collector Victor Chocquet, including ‘red roofs against the blue sea’. He was enchanted by the place, with the rocks overhanging the bay, the vivid blue of the Bay of Marseilles and the always green vegetation. ‘Some subjects demand three or four months’ work, but it is possible to take the time because the vegetation does not change. I am talking about the olive trees and pines, which are evergreen,’ he told Pissarro in 1876. In 1883 he rented a small house with a garden near the railway station in the Ch‰teau-Bovis district. In 1883 he wrote to Zola: ‘There are some beautiful views. … If you go up to the tops of the hills at sunset you will have a fine panoramic view of Marseilles and the islands, bathed in the wonderful evening light.’ He worked on this view of the Bay of Marseilles until the end of the 1880s, with the town of L’Estaque and its chimneys in the foreground, surrounded by the mountains and the great circle of the horizon, where the sea meets the sky. This imposing landscape also inspired Zola, who knew the place well. In his novel Na•s Micoulin Zola wrote: ‘The countryside is superb. Rocks embrace the bay on both sides, while the islands in the distance stand out against the horizon. The sea is nothing but a vast pool, a lake of intense blue when the weather is fine. … Beginning at Marseilles, the coastline curls round and digs out inlets before reaching L’Estaque, edged with its factories, which, from time to time, send out plumes of smoke. When the sun is at its highest the sea looks almost black and seems to be asleep between two headlands of rock, all white with warm touches of yellow and brown. Pine trees appear like green stains on the red earth. It is a vast picture, like a glimpse of a corner of the Far East appearing against the jarring glare of daylight.’
The Bay of Marseilles, Seen from LΓÇÖEstaque (c.1878ΓÇô1879) was the first of C┼╜zanneΓÇÖs paintings to be included in a French national collection, when it was part of the Caillebotte Bequest in 1894.
In 1881ΓÇô1885 a factory was established in the Rio Valley to exploit the minerals of the Rio-Tinto, and this seems to coincide with C┼╜zanneΓÇÖs departure. He was disgusted by the disfiguring industrial development. Unlike the Impressionists, who were interested in modernity, he included factory chimneys in his paintings only to indicate their presence in the landscape rather than from a wish to illustrate the poetry of modern life. He disapproved of the savage intrusions into a familiar scene, and in 1902 he wrote to his niece: ΓÇÿI remember perfectly LΓÇÖEstablon and the once picturesque shore at LΓÇÖEstaque. Unfortunately, this so-called progress is nothing more than an invasion by two-legged animals who are not happy until they have transformed everything into hideous quays with gas burners or ΓÇô even worse ΓÇô with electric lights. What times we are living in!ΓÇÖ
What to C┼╜zanne was so distasteful, however, found favour in the eyes of the following generation of artists, and at the beginning of the twentieth century Fauvists and Cubists such as Derain, Dufy and Braque set up their easels on the shores of LΓÇÖEstaque.
Still-life with apples and oranges
C┼╜zanne painted still lifes throughout his life. Despite the apparently innocuous subject matter and the ease with which models could be found, he never regarded a still life as relaxing work. The still lifes have an important place in his work, reflecting the various stages of his search for a personal style. His first still lifes were in the tradition of such masters as Chardin, Courbet and Manet, who owed a debt to the tenebrist tradition of Spanish painting. These were followed, after 1870, by some ambitious works in which he sought to bring his personal themes into focus: simple still lifes arranged in a corner of his studio or in a middle-class home. The essentially static representation of objects in the early works underwent a dramatic change as C┼╜zanne began to represent objects in space. From 1890 C┼╜zanne produced compositions with large numbers of objects, all carefully balanced to create dynamic groups that defy all sense of reality or even probability. Of these works, Still Life with Apples and Oranges, which was painted about 1899, is a masterpiece.
His still lifes have a landscape-like grandeur of scale, in which subject, shape and colour combine and interact to form an iridescent whole, created from thousands of tones. Unlike the Impressionists, C┼╜zanne did not abandon the practice of outlining his subjects to emphasize individual forms that were essential to the balance of the composition. Nevertheless, he left the outlines broken in order to lead the eye through the painting.
Madame C┼╜zanne
CŽzanne met ƒmilie Hortense Fiquet early in 1869, and she became his companion. They were married in 1886, six months before the death of CŽzanne’s father.
Hortense was born on 22 April 1850 at Saligney in the Jura, and she was eleven years younger than the artist. In 1872 she gave birth to their son, who was also named Paul. Although his mother knew about the relationship, C┼╜zanne concealed it from his father, who only later accidentally learned about the liaison and his grandson. Even then, however, Hortense was never accepted, either by the painterΓÇÖs family or by his circle of friends. The Zolas, who led a respectable, middle-class life, avoided her and called her la boule (ΓÇÿthe ballΓÇÖ), possibly because of her rather round face. The nickname was taken over by even more malicious people, who called the coupleΓÇÖs son le boulet (literally a canon ball, figuratively a millstone around the neck), which says much about the relationship.
C┼╜zanne and Hortense did not live under the same roof for very long. Hortense preferred to live in a large town ΓÇô Paris or Marseilles ΓÇô while C┼╜zanne was working at Aix or LΓÇÖEstaque.
Little is known about Hortense before she met the painter. Her liking for fine clothes suggests that she might have been a model or a dress-maker, and it is said that she chose to keep an appointment with her seamstress in Paris rather than catch the next train to Aix to be with her dying husband. Although she does not seem to have been over-endowed with good qualities, her in-laws did acknowledge that she was even-tempered and possessed unlimited patience. These characteristics explain how she could bear the endless sittings that C┼╜zanne demanded of her without quailing.
Hortense posed for her husband on many occasions. Sitting in a chair, with her hands together and her hair drawn back into a bun, she was resigned to the sessions. Her passivity and patience suited the artist, who required more than a hundred sittings for a portrait. These numerous sittings may explain the vacant look and pursed lips, but they also probably reveal C┼╜zanneΓÇÖs intention of looking beyond the outward appearance and immediate impression in order to portray the timelessness of his model and to paint figures in the same way that he approached still lifes and landscapes.
POPLARS
Thie line of poplars edging the park of the Ch‰teau at Marcouville belong to a series of almost monochromatic landscapes which CŽzanne painted around Paris.
The rendering of the leaves through geometrical brush strokes applied in a hatching, parallel fashion, give a very strong structure to the enormous mass of foliage rising above the upright tree trunks. The rigorous treatment states quite clearly the artist's intention to dissociate himself from the allusive nature of the Impressionists' brush strokes. The skill in this landscape is to render the shape and volume of the trees without resorting to a realistic treatment of the elements. The decreasing size of the poplars guides the eye along a sinuous line through to the back of the composition which is closed by a hill. This suppleness, echoed also in the serpentine line followed by the path, is counterbalancing the vertical screen formed by the trees across the composition.
