Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne was born in Aix en Provence, France, on 19th

January 1839, the son of a successful businessman and banker.

He went to school in Aix where he met Emile Zola who became

his closest friend and was to have a significant influence on

his career. Cézanne’s father always had it mind for his son to

follow him into banking but during his schooldays with Zola,

Cézanne developed a strong desire to become a painter.

Although he followed his father’s wishes when he left school

and enrolled on a law

course at the University

of Aix, he also studied at

the Ecole Municipale de

Dessin. He eventually

abandoned his law studies

and, with the reluctant

agreement of his father,

joined Zola and the

Impressionists in Paris in

1861.

Paul Cézanne was a complex

character. He was

temperamental, shy and lacked self-confidence. His

abrasiveness meant he did not fit in well in Paris and he

tended to hide behind a rough provincial persona. His painting

style was completely different to that of the established

Portrait de l’artiste. c. 1866

Paris Salon and he was routinely rejected for the annual

exhibition. His temperament was such that he often submitted

deliberately provocative works, building a reputation as

something of an enfant terrible in doing so.

As a result of being rejected by the Salon jury in 1863, as

were the works of the entire impressionist community that

year, Cézanne participated with them in the alternative Salon

des Refusés and in subsequent impressionist exhibitions.

However, despite a period during the 1870’s when he lived and

worked closely with Pissarro in Pontoise, he himself said that

he was looking for something beyond impressionism: I wanted to

make of Impressionism something solid and enduring like the art in museums1 . In

his later career he far exceeded this basic objective,

creating a way of representing his motifs that was completely

different to the conventional illusory techniques of

representing a three dimensional scene on a two dimensional

surface.

Paul Cézanne spent his whole life striving to reach his

artistic goal. He believed that colour and form were

inseparable and his intent was to express this in his

paintings. He sought to present everything on the flat surface

of the canvas necessary for the viewer to see what he himself

was seeing as he stood before the motif. The outcome was to

create visual effects in his paintings that are characteristic

of what we today might refer to as holographic; images that

1 John Rewald. Paul Cézanne, Letters. (New York, Di Capo Press, 1976).

have real visual depth and change their spatial relationship

as our eyes move about them.

This essay attempts to chart Cézanne’s artistic journey with

reference to his paintings and, in particular, to his

landscapes. Reference will also be made to letters and other

documents that contextualise his work and also to the key

people and events in his life that steered him from his birth

at 28 Rue de l’Opera, Aix en Provence, to his death at 23 Rue

Boulegon in the same town. A journey of just 1km that took

this most unusual artist 67 years to complete.

In the early part of Cézanne’s painting career, from his first

visit to Paris in 1861 to the period following the Franco-

Prussian war in the 1870’s, his work was characterised by dark

tonal contrasts, thick layers of pigment and heavy use of the

palette knife. Rewald2 described how a number of the

Impressionists were influenced by Courbet’s use of the palette

knife and how Cézanne took it the furthest, attempting to

impregnate Courbet’s ‘monumental simplifications’ with

dramatic effects and chiaroscuro contrasts.

Gombrich3 observed an additional feature of Courbet’s work that

might have sowed the seeds for Cézanne’s later pictorial

direction. He notes that Courbet wanted ‘to be the pupil of no

one but nature’ and that he ‘encouraged many others to flout

convention and follow nothing but their own artistic

concience’. This may have opened Cézanne’s eyes to a

2 John Rewald. The History of Impressionism (New York, The Museum of Modern Art. 2nd ed. 1946) p134.3 E. H. Gombrich. The Story of Art. (London. Phaidon. 15th ed. 1989) p511.

compelling new vision that was to emerge later; but during the

1860’s Cézanne had other things on his mind.

Cézanne’s choice of subject was symptomatic of his general

insecurity in the presence of others, his anxieties about

women and the effects of his provincial upbringing. He chose

non-threatening subjects. His still-lifes were completely

under his control, were inanimate and were enclosed in his

studio where he could work unobserved. His landscapes were

carried out from isolated viewpoints. His portraits were

invariably of family and friends. The only female portraits he

painted were of his mother, his sister and his wife. His

remarkable output of 35 self-portraits shows how he constantly

reverted to the ultimate in non-threatening subjects for his

portraiture: himself.

Cézanne’s anxiety about women and an indication of his

personal fantasies about them are shown in his early works on

imaginary themes. The themes were drawn from his constant

sketching in the Louvre whilst in Paris and galleries

elsewhere, and this approach, again, avoided him having to

deal with people. Even when sketching at the Atelier Suisse,

the inexpensive studio popular with the Impressionists, the

models were non-threatening as they were paid to be there and

there was no need to form a personal relationship. He rarely

painted nudes from life. His recurrent theme of ‘The Bathers’

was drawn from his imagination and the same figures were used

repeatedly.

Cézanne showed a

need to expose his

voyeuristic

tendencies in a

number of his

paintings. Perhaps

the most explicit is

A Modern Olympia which

is based on the

infamous painting by

Manet. Here the

artist is shown as a

lone visitor in the boudoir dispassionately contemplating the

naked woman on the bed.

Rewald4 remarks that ‘Cézanne worked between 1863 and 1870 at

various group compositions of an unusual character. In these

the artist was guided solely by his imagination, haunted by

the grandiose and passionate scenes which his mind and

restless imagination constantly conjured up’.

Although his later mature periods sublimated this restless

energy, an increasingly refined recurrence of his manière

couillarde continued in the ‘Bathers’ series to the end of his

life. During this first decade of his painting career, these

anecdotal paintings attracted severe criticism from the Salon

juries and the press. They were also the subject of ridicule

and amusement on the part of the public at the Salon des Refusés

4 John Rewald. Paul Cézanne. (London, Spring Books, 1912) p38.

Une Moderne Olympia. c. 1873

and elsewhere and Cézanne frequently retreated to Aix filled

with doubt.

Even in Aix he did not escape criticism. Guillemet wrote to

Zola5 that ‘The people of Aix continue to irritate him, they

ask to be allowed to come and see his paintings, only to scoff

at them ... so he has discovered a good way of dealing with

them: Je vous emmerde he says to them ... and they all flee in

horror!’

Cézanne’s unconventional painting style and what Platzmann6

calls his ‘aggressive non-conformism’ tended to isolate him

not only from the established art community, but also from the

avant-garde art world centred around Manet. Platzman suggests

that this was an act of deliberate social positioning to

provide freedom for individual expression. An alternative

interpretation might be that this was the classic defence

mechanism of an introvert who deals with his fear of isolation

by controlling it.

Cézanne, thankfully, was not entirely without friends and

supporters in Paris. There was Zola, Coste and Guillemet from

Aix, and he also established a very amicable relationship with

Camille Pissarro whom he met at the Atelier Suisse. Rewald7

reports that his life during his periods back in Aix was

calmer than in Paris and he painted mainly portraits of

friends and family at this time. Though still with a

relatively dark palette and impasto technique, the5 Antoine Guillamet. Letter to Emile Zola(Aix, 2nd Nov 1866. in Rewald Paul Cezanne Letters)6 Steven Platzman. Cézanne: the self-portraits. (London, 2001) p65.7 John Rewald. Paul Cézanne. (London, Spring Books, 1912) p38.

observational composition of his portraits contrasted

dramatically with his wild fantasy paintings.

The Franco-Prussian war was a turning point in Cézanne’s

painting career. When it started in 1870 the impressionists

scattered from Paris, either fleeing to avoid conscription or

enlisting in the Army. Cézanne chose the former option and

went to live in l’Estaque near Marseilles with his partner

Hortense Fiquet. Abandoning imaginary scenes more and more,

Cézanne was inspired by the magnificent bay of Marseilles with

its abundance of sunlight and vibrancy of colours. He also

became convinced about the advantages of outdoor painting

When the war ended, the impressionists returned to the

capital. Cézanne, together with Hortense and their newly born

son, Paul, went to live just outside Paris in Pontoise. Here

Uncle Dominique, c. 1866 The Murder, c. 1870

he worked with Pissarro who guided him in the painting

techniques of the impressionists. As a result he adopted a

brighter palette and shorter, livelier brushstrokes. He still

used palette knives, but special ones that were narrower and

more supple.

This was a significant period. Cézanne took Pissarro’s advice

to ‘only paint with the three primary colours and their

immediate derivatives’. From this advice, and as his technique

developed, Cézanne arrived at a standard palette of 18 tone

gradations of the primary colours, one derivative, green, and

black. Rewald8 suggests that it was from Pissarro that Cézanne

obtained his belief in the rendering of form through colour

and was strongly influenced by his aphorism that ‘one should

have no master but nature, who was always to be consulted’.

8 John Rewald. Paul Cézanne. (London, Spring Books, 1912) p84.

During the early 1870’s Cézanne and Pissarro worked closely

together and often set up their easels side by side to paint

the same scene. Pissarro explained later to his son that the

one thing that was different was their own personal

‘sensation’ of what they saw. As noted by Turner9, it is by

comparing the resulting paintings that the extraordinary

direction of Cézanne’s developing technique is revealed. The

two images here serve that purpose10.

Pissarro’s painting at l’Hermitage is bright and fleeting and

very much in the Impressionist mould. The little lane meanders

away around the corner, the hills disappear in the distance,

and everything, perspective-wise, is as it should be.

9 Norman Turner. The Essay on Cezanne. ([online]. Available at http://www.normanturner.net/Exist%20Persp.pdf. 2005)10 See Appendix A for high quality copies. Note, however that even in thesereproductions the colour balance is much less luminous in comparison with the copies described in the text.

House and Tree, l’Hermitage, c. 1874. CézanneThe Large Walnut Tree at l’Hermitage, c. 1874. Pissarro

Not so with the Cézanne. The lane appears to rear up to the

left and the hills seem much closer and almost wall-like.

Every object, both near and far, is at first sight, in focus.

In general the composition is OK, but there is something not

quite right. It seems quite dull, quite dark11, compared with

the bright white house of Pissarro.

That is, until the viewer begins to explore the picture as

though it were real, rather than see it as a pictorial

representation. This means that the viewer is using binocular,

not monocular vision. Cézanne composed the picture for that

view. When viewed that way the picture immediately becomes a

hologram.

The lane is now flat as the eye moves along it. It has grass

growing in the middle. The left wall of the house is glowing

in the sun. The centre of the front wall also glows in the

reflection of something, maybe some water, and the foliage to

the right dances with light. The clouds in the background are

also bathed in light and the fields, when you get there, are

now just gently rising.

The walnut tree, its centre section also catching the sun,

emphasises the three dimensional nature of the vision

provided. Everything now is in its correct place, even the

details of the front garden area and its shrubs and fencing

are clear. A glance now back to the Pissarro image completes

the comparison.

11 A proper comparison in these terms can only be made between the originals.

Cézanne exhibited at the Impressionist exhibitions in 1874 and

1877 and continued to attract criticism, though he now also

had others who championed his cause including the collector

Victor Chocquet and the art critic Georges Rivière.

Rivière chided the press and public12 at the 1877 exhibition in

their reaction to Chocquet’s portrait: ‘They come to M.

Cézanne’s works in order to laugh their heads off. For my part

I don’t know of any painting less laughable than this ... they

have criticised him for imperfections which are actually a

refinement obtained through tremendous knowledge’.

Despite this support, Cézanne resettled in Provence in the

late 1870’s and although he regularly visited Paris, he became

an increasingly remote figure in the Paris art world. He did

not exhibit there again until 1895.

During what has

been referred to as

Cézanne’s period of

synthesis13 and later,

he continued to

develop his ideas

about how to

present images that

would allow the

viewer to

experience the

depth and movement in his landscapes. He developed and applied

12 Georges Rivière. l’Impressioniste, (Journal d’Art , Paris, 1877)13 Geneviève Monnier. Cézanne, Paul. (Grove Art Online, 2010)

Monte Sainte-Victoire, c. 1904

his constructive brushstroke14, which is evident in his increasingly

abstract paintings of Monte Sainte-Victoire that he painted

from his studio at Les Lauves on the outskirts of Aix. In the

example here he is employing multiple visual devices to create

the desired effect: overlapping planes, multiple viewpoint

perspective, the recessive effect of the cooler blues, the

repoussoir effect of the dark trees and so on. Harmony arises

from the golden sections created by the bold horizontal at the

base of the mountain and the vertical defined by the

escarpment to the right.

What Cézanne appears to have been trying to do is

progressively involve the viewer more in their mental

reconstruction of the motif. To paraphrase Johnson15, he was

exhibiting in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features as recall

the original to every mind.

He paid particular attention to the source of vision in all

his paintings, the multiple viewpoints creating tension and

movement that he requires the viewer to resolve. It is known

that he moved the position of his easel when working on his

landscapes and never ceased to develop his use of the

technique. He wrote to his son16 that: ‘Here on the bank of the

river the motifs multiply. The same subject seen from a

different angle offers subjects for study of the most powerful

interest and so varied that I think I could occupy myself for

months ... turning now more to the right, now more to the

left’.14 Theodore Reff. Cezanne’s Constructive Stroke. (Art Quarterly, Denver, 1962)15 Sam Johnson. Rasselas. (London, 1817)16 John Rewald. Paul Cézanne, Letters. (New York, 1976)

Cézanne described how he sought to render what his mind

visualised, not just what his eyes saw. He would see the whole

image in its harmonic and spatial relationships before he

began to map his vision on the canvas. He was looking for

complete resolution in the image.

He said to Joachin Gasquet17: ‘Here is my motif. (He put his

hands together, drew them apart, the ten fingers open; very

slowly brought them together again, clasped them, squeezed

them tighter and tighter, as though meshing them into one.)

That's what you

have to try to do.

If one is higher

or lower than the

other, all goes to

pieces. Everything

has so to mesh

with everything

else that there is

no way for the

feeling, for the

light, for the truth to escape... Our art must render the

thrill of nature's permanence along with her elements, the

appearance of all her changes... So I bring together her

wandering hands’.

Only when he had this vision did he then begin to paint,

mapping it to the canvas in the structural application of

colour. He described how the whole composition had to be in17 Michael Doran. Conversations with Cézanne. (Berkley, California, 2001) p110.

The Garden at Les Lauves, c. 1906

balance and resolved and he sought to achieve this painting the

whole picture at once using the scale of tone gradations in his

palette. It is not difficult to see how The Garden at Les Lauves

would eventually become another rendition of Monte Saint-

Victoire.

In a discussion with Ambroise Vollard18, Cézanne explained that

if he were to place a random colour on one of the remaining

bare patches on his portrait, then he would be obliged to

rework the entire picture, starting at that point, to achieve

the balance he was seeking.

In his final decade, Cézanne emerged from his self-imposed

isolation in Provence following the 1895 exhibition of his

work organised in Paris by Ambroise Vollard. In 1899 the

returns from two sales of Cézanne paintings caused a lot of

excitement; Claude Monet paying the highest price of the year

for a landscape. A growing number of young artists were

regarding his work to be visionary and visited him in Aix. It

was with the young painter Emile Bernard that Cézanne shared

his ideas about painting. The conversations they had

revealed19, however, that he had no particular desire to

theorise about his art and chastised his inquisitive admirer:

‘I am not in the habit of reasoning so much’.

At the same time, he continued to be driven by the lifetime

goal that he was reluctant to articulate. In his last letter

to Bernard, written just one month before his death, he

laments: ‘Will I ever attain the end for which I have striven

18 Ambroise Vollard. Cézanne. (New York, 1984)19 Michael Doran. Conversations with Cézanne. (Berkley, California, 2001)

so much and long?’ Later in the same letter he says: ‘I am

always studying after nature and it seems to me that I make

slow progress ... but I am old, ill, and have sworn to myself

to die painting ...’

Paul Cézanne was a unique painter who, though aligned with the

impressionists and later lauded as the father of modern art,

was really neither. He ploughed a lone and lonely furrow, but

has left a legacy of immense value for those seeking to

visually communicate what they see.

Tony Toole

May 2010

Bibliography

Doran, Michael. Conversations with Cézanne. (Berkley, California,

2001)

Gombrich, E. H. The Story of Art. (London, Phaidon. 1989)

Johnson, Samuel . The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. (London,

1817)

Platzman, Steven. Cézanne: the self-portraits. (London, Thames &

Hudson, 2001)

Monnier, Geneviève. Cézanne, Paul. [online] (Grove Art Online.

Oxford Art Online, 2010).

Reff, Theodore. "Cézanne's Constructive Stroke," (Art

Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 3, Autumn 1962)

Rewald, John. Paul Cézanne, Letters. (New York, Di Capo Press, 1976).

Rewald, John. The History of Impressionism (New York, The Museum of Modern Art. 1946)

Rewald, John. Paul Cézanne. (London, Spring Books, 1912)

Rivière, Georges. l’Impressioniste, (Journal d’Art , Paris, 1877)

Turner, Norman. The Essay on Cezanne. ([online]. Available at

http://www.normanturner.net/Exist%20Persp.pdf. 2005)

Vollard, Ambroise. Cézanne. (New York, Dover, 1984)

Appendix A: Images referred to in the text.

1. The Large Walnut Tree at l’Hermitage, c. 1874. Pissarro

2. House and Tree, l’Hermitage, c. 1874. Cézanne

3. Monte Sainte-Victoire, c. 1904

4. The Garden at Les Lauves, c. 1906