Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne (January 19th 1839 with Aix-en-Provence, France - October 22nd 1906 in Aix-en-Provence) is a painter French. One owes him in particular a portrait of Achille Emperaire and a cycle of paintings on the Montagne Holy-Victoire.

Biography

Paul Cézanne is born on January 19th, 1839 in the street from the Opera, in Aix-en-Provence. His/her father, Louis Auguste Cézanne, originating in Saint-Zacharie (VAr), descendant of Italian immigrants come from Cesana, has a hat industry on the Cours Mirabeau. The family is relatively easy and the father quickly creates a bank street of Cordeliers, to which it will give the name of “bank Cézanne and Cabassol”, of its proper name and that of its associate.

Paul Cézanne attends the College Bourbon (become Mignet college), where it binds friendship with Emile Zola. He undertakes without enthusiasm of the studies of right to the Université of Aix. He follows courses to the Art school and arranges a workshop with the Jas de Bouffan, residence which his/her father bought. He leaves first once to Paris, pushed by his friend Zola, but there remains only a few months and goes back in the family field. It thus inaugurates a series of return ticket between the City of Light and the Provence. In the capital, there meets Achille Emperaire, another Inhabitant of Aix, of which the weather will be during the portrait later, remained famous.

In 1862, it gives up the legal career and sets out again with Paris. He works with the Swiss Académie and meets there Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley. He is refused with the École of the Art schools because of a temperament considered to be too excessive.

During the year 1869, it meets Hortense Fiquet with which it will have a son. It will hide this connection with his father during all the life of this last. Besides he will marry it only in 1886, the year of died of his father. He settles with Estaque, small village on the coast, when he is not in the capital.

In 1872, it settles with Auvers-sur-Oise, where it paints with Pissarro, and works in the house of the Doctor Gachet. In 1874, the Impressionnistes organize their first collective exposure in the workshop of the photographer Nadar and the public reserves a not very encouraging reception, even scandalized, with the fabrics of Cézanne which into present three ( modern Olympia , the House of hung and Étude, landscape of Auvers ). It does not present any table during the second impressionist exposure, but watch 16 works in 1877 with the third demonstration. Criticisms are very mitigated and it is detached from the impressionist group and joined Provence starting from 1882, initially with Estaque, then with Gardanne in 1885, small village close to Aix. There, it begins its cycle of paintings on the Montagne Holy-Victoire, which it represents in nearly 80 works (for half with the Aquarelle). Its financial position remains precarious, the more so as his/her father decreases his support.

In 1886, it breaks with Zola which sent its novel to him the Work , whose painter is the inspirer. The April 28th, it marries Hortense. The same year, his/her father dies, leaving him a comfortable heritage putting it at the shelter financially.

Its first personal exposure, organized by the merchant of table Ambroise Vollard in 1895 in the absence of the painter, still runs up against the incomprehension of the public, but the regard of the artists is worth to him. Its fame becomes international and it gains with Brussels a great success during the exposures of the Independent ones. It is made build in 1901 a workshop in the periphery of Aix: the workshop of Lauves.

In October 1906, whereas it paints on the reason, in the solid mass of the Holy-Victoire, a violent one storm falls down. Cézanne makes a faintness. It is collected by carters and is deposited in his house of the street Boulegon, in Aix, where it will die, the 22, carried by a Pneumonie.

Its work

Among those of the painters of the XIX° century arranged under the label “Impressionist”, the work of Cézanne is probably most difficult and that which was and remains still today most badly included/understood, even the most discussed. They are his/her friends painters, in particular Pissarro, Renoir and Degas which knew, the first, to detect its intentions and to recognize its qualities. Pissarro wrote: " while I was to admire the curious side, disconcerting of Cézanne that I feel since many years, arrives Renoir. But my enthusiasm is only of Midsummer's Day beside that of Renoir, Degas itself which undergoes the charm of this nature of refined savage, Monet, all… are we in the error? … I do not believe it… The only ones which does not undergo the charm, are precisely artists or amateurs who by their errors show us well that feel their fact defect. Remainder, they evoke all logically defects which we see, who burst the eyes, but the charm… they do not see it… As Renoir very precisely said it to me, there is one I do not know what of analog to the so rough and so admirable things of Pompeï… "

From 1862 to 1870, date what Cézanne called in its southernmost liveliness, and with a little D `exaggeration, its “period couillarde”, and that the historians name his romantic period or its phase baroque, influenced by the baroques Italian or Spanish (Ribera, Zurbaran), the caravagesques ones of from Aix churches or the collections of the Granet museum, or by Eugene Delacroix, Courbet and Manet. Cézanne is expressed then generally in a thick paste, with a dark pallet and black funds: Breads and eggs (1865), Portrait of Louis-Auguste Cézanne (1866) Head of old man (1866), Antony Vallabrègue (1866), the Madeleine (1868-1869) Achilles Emperaire (1868-1869) Modern Olympia (1869-1870), Nature-dead with the kettle (1869) Nature-dead with the black clock .

Comes then the “impressionist” period, under the influence of Pissarro, auprès of which it settles in Auvers-sur-Oise, about 1872-1873. ] It attends there Van Gogh, Guillaumin and Doctor Gachet. In its works of then, the tone, by keys always thick but more subtle than during the romantic time, replaces modelled traditional: the House of hung (1873), the Road of the village with Auvers (1872-73), the house of Doctor Gachet (1873). Already announce themselves through this impressionist period, other concerns which will move away it from research specific to the impressionists, without he never disavowing the lesson of freshness, of vibrations coloured and luminous that those brought to the painting of their time, but at his place the modulation of the color more seeks from now on to express volumes that the atmospheric effects and of luminosity. Renoir said, while speaking about the art critic Castagnary: “I mad with the idea that it did not understand that Modern Olympia of Cézanne (in its version of 1873) was a traditional masterpiece more close to Giorgione that of Claude Monet and that it had in front of the eyes the perfect example of a painter already left impressionism. ” It is still Renoir which brings back the incomprehension of Emile Zola when Cézanne entrusted its concern to him “to find volumes”: Zola “tried to show to him the vanity of such a research. “You are gifted. If you wanted only to look after the expression. Your characters do not express anything! ” one Cézanne day was annoyed. “And do my buttocks they express something? ”.

“To find volumes”, here that it was the true obsession of Cézanne, “to make Poussin on nature”, “something of solid like L `art of the museums”.

This great intention, it is with a technique which is personal for him that Cézanne wants to carry it out. This technique, writing Leon Gard, painter and writer of art of the 20th century, “wants to solve the problem of painting without resorting by means of the drawing-line, nor with that of obscure light. As he said itself, he wanted, by diaprures, to combine the problems of the drawing and of modelled, thus joining the old painter of the unknown Chef-d'oeuvre of Balzac which exclaimed: " The drawing does not exist! " , wanting to say by there that in a work of painting all must be expressed, drawing and values, by the only modulation of the color. ”

One sees to affirm this tendency about 1880: let us quote Estaque , the Bridge with Maincy , the nature-dead self-portraits or the of the museum of Orsay, those of the museum of the Hermitage or Philadelphia, the Holy-Victoire Mountain seen of Bellevue (Metropolitan Museum), the Plain with the foot of the mountain Holy-Victoire and the Edges of the Marne (Pouchkine museum). Cézanne will take always further this route which S `will complete in 1906 on “the reason”, not ceasing recommending nature: “The real and invaluable study to undertake it is the diversity of the table of nature”; “I always return from there to this: the painter must devote himself entirely to the study of nature, and try to produce tables which are a teaching. ” But it was aware of the challenge that it was necessary on itself and the doubt often étreignait it: “One neither too scrupulous, neither too sincere, nor is subjected too much to nature; but one is more or less Master of his model and especially of his means of expression. ”. In fact, he complains that “the coloured feelings which give the light are at his place causes abstractions which do not enable him to cover its fabric, nor to continue the delimitation of the objects when the contact points are thin, delicate”. By discipline, Cézanne " fondait" never: from where the aspect of incomplétude that certain studies of the Holy-Victoire mountain present, or abrupt, unpleasing character for the layman of his characters, even formless of the Baigneurs or the Baigneuses for which are added the lack of models in the desired place. “On another side, the plans fall the ones on the others”, acknowledges it. It is that the formula cézanienne is of a disproportionate ambition.

] “Practically, known as Leon Gard, it is almost a dream to want to apply to the letter this formula, because one always runs up against the imperfection and the limit of the material, with which one always needs ruser. Nevertheless, if it is embarrassing to follow this imposing theory when one does not have exceptional gifts, it is obvious qu `Cézanne, of which the eye was able to weigh tons them, the values as with the milligram, can create masterpieces, and even lead to failures which remain higher than the successes of the majority of the other painters. ”

With died of Cézanne, certain painters wanting to create new movements claimed themselves of him. The most notorious case is that of the Cubistes. Despite everything that one could say and write, there remains doubtful that Cézanne had recognized this paternity. It is not there any more to answer, but its correspondence preserves some sentences which one can contemplate; for example, this one: “It is necessary to be wary of the literary man spirit which so often makes the painter deviate from his true way - the concrete study of nature - to lose itself too a long time in intangible speculations. ”.

Paul, Emile and Work

“Paul can have the genius of a great painter, it will not have never the genius to become it. ” Thus Emile Zola announces it the drama of Paul Cézanne, always dissatisfied of his work. The writer goes further: Claude Lantier, the central figure of Work , novel published in 1886, is close to Cézanne by the aspect and the character. Zola makes a missed painter of it, however chief of the new school of “Outdoor”; Claude ends up committing suicide. In a certain way, the novel can be read like a revenge of the literature on painting and the description of the group of artists turns to the caricature. Manet, which made scandal with the Salon of Refused the in 1863, could also be used as model to the novelist. However, Cézanne believed to be recognized in this painter: wounded, he answered Zola a letter of a cold courtesy which put a final term at their friendship. The last contacts between the two artists go up with 1885, after the publication of " Oeuvre" . Cézanne leaves Médan or it had been received by the Zola couple. They will not be re-examined any more in spite of some opportunities of meetings in Aix-en-Provence where the painter withdrew himself. Cézanne is not any more at ease in the new world built by the writer who, as from 1888, will see his existense complicated by the relation that it maintains with his mistress, Jeanne Rozerot. The discovery of this connection by his wife, Alexandrine Zola, in 1891 will not slacken the atmosphere of the couple which will live difficult periods until 1896. Zola will know then the Affaire Dreyfus which will occupy its life until its death in 1902. This existence, very disturbed, will not facilitate the bringing together of the two friends of childhood. It seems that Paul Cézanne suffered from it if one takes account of the sorrow of which he will make proof with the advertisement of dead of Emile Zola and during the inauguration of a statue to the image of the writer at the beginning of 1906.

Some of its works

Its dimension

  • Rideau, small jug and fruit dish were sold in 1999 for the sum of 56,41 million euros, which constituted the fourth stronger bidding ever reached for a table.
  • Kettle and fruits was sold in December 1999 for the sum of 44,67 million euros.
  • Still life with green melon sold watercolour 25,5M$ in 2007

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