Hello, my name is Paul Priestley. Welcome to Artist in School, the home of art history
for young people and for interested amateurs. Today we are going to look at the French artist,
the life and work of the great Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne.
‘Paul may have the genius of a great painter but will never the possess the genius to actually
become one. He despairs at even the smallest obstacle,’ so said his friend Emile Zola.
Paul Cézanne was a stubborn man who refused to compromise or make any form of concession
to society, or to art for that matter. This often made him appear a strange and eccentric
figure. He lived for his painting; it was his only passion in life. Friends and family
took second place and as he grew older and more insular, he was often referred to as
the Hermit of Aix en Provence. Paul Cézanne was born on the 19th of January
1839 in Aix en Provence in France, the eldest of three children.
At the age of 13, in 1852, Cézanne attended the Humanist College in Aix, the College Bourbon,
where he became good friends with Jean Baptiste Baille and Emile Zola, who’d later earned
fame as a writer. Cézanne’s father was an authoritarian figure,
unlike his son, who was indecisive and lacked self-confidence. Cézanne was quite incapable
of standing up to his domineering father. As a consequence, Cézanne followed his father’s
wishes and began a law course at Aix University in 1859.
But Cézanne also attended evening classes at the drawing school in Aix and won a second
prize for figure painting. Meanwhile, his father bought the Jas de Bouffan estate near
Aix, the former summer residence of the governor of Provence. But Cézanne was finding living
at home intolerable and became increasingly withdrawn. Eventually, in 1861, his father
allowed him to leave Aix en Provence and travel to Paris where he met up with his friend Emile
Zola. Cézanne spent that summer in Paris in the
Louvre copying paintings by Titian and Rubens. He also studied life drawing at the Academy
Suisse where he met Camille Pissarro who eventually became his mentor. He painted a portrait of
Emile Zola, but he didn’t finish it. He became increasingly despondent at his lack
of success and soon returned to Aix-en-Provence. Reluctantly, he took a job at his father’s
bank, but also attended the local drawing school. Surprisingly, the following year he
managed to persuade his father to let him leave the bank and give him an allowance of
125 Francs a month so he could setup a studio at home. But harmony did not last and by November
1862 he was back in Paris. During 1863 and 1864 Cézanne worked regularly
at the Academy Suisse in Paris where he met Renoir, Monet, and Sisley. He applied to the
prestigious Ecole des Beaux Art but was rejected because they felt his paintings were overworked.
But that did not stop him exhibiting at the Salon des Refuses with Manet and Pissarro,
unfortunately, his paintings were described as looking as though the paint had be flung
at the canvas. The following year he entered paintings for
the Salon, but they were rejected. The annual Salon exhibition in Paris was where every
successful artist aspired to exhibit, but the academicians who organised the Salon were
very conservative. Cezanne’s work stood little chance of being accepted, despite the
letter of protest he sent to the director of Fine Arts. Downcast, he again returned
to Aix-en-Provence and began painting outside for the first time. He also painted this picture
of his father reading a newspaper. The tension here is particularly evident in the energetic
and expressive handling of the paint, almost an exaggeration of Gustave Courbet's palette
knife technique. In 1869 he met Hortense Fiquet, a 19-year
old bookbinder, who would become his lover, but later in the year, the Salon rejected
his work again. The same happened in 1870, but this time he was also humiliated. An art
critic named Stock, wrote an article about the Salon, which included a caricature of
Cézanne, resplendent with a walrus moustache and his two rejected paintings. Cézanne defiantly
defended himself. ‘Dear Mr Stock’, he wrote, ‘I paint how I see, how I feel, and
I have very strong feelings. You paint Salon paintings, I take risks, Mr Stock, I take
risks’. But when the Franco-Prussian war broke out
in 1870, Cézanne decided to spend the time with Hortense in L'Estaque in southern France.
But despite the relationship, which he kept secret from his father for the next 8 years,
he still felt lonely. Perhaps because he was shy around women and panic-stricken at the
very thought of physical contact. Yet in 1872 Cézanne’s son Paul was born
and the family moved to Auver sur Oise, here he worked closely with his friend and mentor
Camille Pissarro. Pissarro, who was 9 years older than Cézanne, was sympathetic, tolerant
and a born teacher, almost a surrogate father. Pissarro advised him to remove dark colours
from his palette, not to paint with black, but only with the three primary colours and
their derivatives. Cézanne took his advice and the creation of his dark expressive, intuitive
paintings came to an end. In 1873 he met Dr Gachet who would, years later, look after
Van Gogh. Cézanne painted in Dr Gachet’s house and there he met the art dealer Julian
Tanguy who allowed him to exchange his pictures for paint.
The first exhibition of the Impressionists was held at the photographer Nadar's studio
in 1874, Cézanne showed three paintings. His works, The House of the Hanged Man, A
Modern Olympia, and Landscape at Auver attracted considerable attention. But Monet was not
impressed and described Cézanne, ‘as a bricklayer who paints with a trowel’. Despite
the criticism, The House of the Hanged Man sold for 300 francs.
1875 brought another rejection by the Salon, and through Renoir, Cézanne met the art lover
Victor Chocquet, who became one of his most enthusiastic collectors. Two years later,
he showed 16 paintings at the third Impressionist exhibition, but after a hail of criticism
decided not show with the Impressionists again. He spent most of 1878 in Aix-en-Provence and
L’Estaque, whilst Hortense and his son Paul lived in Marseille. Unfortunately, his father
learned of his family’s existence, so he cut Cézanne’s family allowance. Luckily,
Emile Zola made up the shortfall. And, you’ve guessed it, his work was again rejected by
the Salon. Between 1879 and 1885 he tried many more times
to enter work for the Salon, but apart from one success, all ended in rejection. Finally,
he admitted defeat. In 1886 his friendship with Emile Zola came
to an abrupt end after Zola published his novel ‘The Masterpiece’ about a failed
artist. Cézanne was angry, as he thought the story was partly based on him. Later that
year he married Hortense, shortly before he inherited the house at Jas de Bouffan and
a considerable fortune, following the death of his father. Now he would spend most of
his time in Aix en Provence painting in the surrounding landscape.
Cézanne rejected the theories of the Impressionists, theories of light, he wasn’t interested
in momentary light effects and reflections. You’ll notice there is no recognisable light
source in many of his paintings, therefore no heavy shadows. The light is even, colours
are given equal weight, wherever they appear in the picture. This is because he wasn’t
satisfied with simply painting what he saw, he wanted to delve deep into nature and depict
what was permanent about it. He applied paint in a series of discrete,
methodical brushstrokes, as though "constructing" a picture rather than "painting" it. If he
couldn’t achieve the exact colour balance he sought, he simply abandoned the painting
where he stood, or destroyed it in a fit of fury.
In this still life painting, ‘Cherries and Peaches’, Cézanne developed a completely
new way of depicting objects in space. Notice the plate of cherries are tilted forwards,
as though we are looking down on them. The same is true of the back part of the table,
but the front is painted as though we are seeing it horizontally from the front. The
plate of peaches and the jug and are also painted from a lower angle. He was using multiple
viewpoints – an idea Picasso would later develop.
Cézanne showed three paintings at ‘The 20’ exhibition in Brussels in 1890, but
later that year was diagnosed with diabetes. And as he grew older and more isolated, he
increasingly retreated into the solitude of Jas de Bouffan where he could paint undisturbed.
However, he did paint people. But his models tended to be male and cheap to hire, such
as farmers and labourers, as can be seen in these wonderful paintings of card players.
He wasn’t interested in their personalities, or their emotions, he was simply interested
in the composition, the structure of the painting and the careful balance between the colours
and the forms. 1895 saw his first one-man exhibition at the
Gallery of the Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard. But two years later his mother died, and Jas
de Bouffan was surprisingly sold. Cézanne moved into an apartment in Aix-en-Provence
and he employed a housekeeper, who apparently told a friend, ‘I am under strict instructions
not to touch him, not even with my dress when I push past him’.
The National Gallery in Berlin became the first Gallery to buy one of Cézanne’s paintings
in 1897. But from then on, apart from a few relatively short visits to Paris, Cézanne
spent most of his time in Aix en Provence, painting his beloved mountain, Mont Sainte
– Victoire. He would paint the mountain many, many times.
In 1902 he bought a plot of land at Chemin des Lauves and built a studio house. The following
year Emile Zola died, and his art collection was auctioned. Interestingly, the works by
Cézanne sold for an average of 1500 Francs each.
In Paris in 1904, Cézanne exhibited 30 paintings in the Salon d’Automne. But despite becoming
increasingly reclusive, and weakened by his diabetes, he decided on one last great project.
He would create a number of large paintings based around an idea that first appeared at
the beginning of his career, namely semi-abstract figures in a landscape. ‘The Bathers’
as they were called, included figures taken from numerous sources, life drawings done
many years earlier at the Academy Suisse, sketches made from illustrations in his sister’s
fashion magazines and most importantly, from pencil sketches he’d made in the Louvre
of paintings by Delacroix, Rubens, Raphael, Michelangelo and Poussin. He didn’t use
live nude models. You’ll notice that Cézanne strictly segregated
the sexes to remove any element of the sensual, or erotic, this was so he could concentrate
on the compositional and formal problems of the painting. The figures become almost spiritual
beings. He again exhibited at the Salon d’Automne
in 1905, but his health was deteriorating. He was suffering from depression which manifested
itself in an increasingly paranoid distrust of people.
The summer 1906 was stiflingly hot, Cézanne found it intolerable and could only paint
on the banks of the river in Aix where the air was slightly cooler. That autumn, whilst
painting outside, he was caught in a torrential storm. A week later, on the 22nd of October
he died of pneumonia and was buried at the San Pierre cemetery in Aix en Provence.
Picasso referred to Paul Cézanne as "my one and only master”. Henri Matisse as “the
father of us all". More importantly, they both realised that Cézanne had provided the
creative foundation for so much of the art that followed in the 20th century.
Thank you for watching, I hope you have really enjoyed learning about Paul Cézanne, a wonderful
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