The French painter
Paul Cézanne {say-zahn'}, who exhibited little in his lifetime
and pursued his interests increasingly in artistic isolation, is
regarded today as one of the great forerunners of modern painting,
both for the way that he evolved of putting down on canvas exactly
what his eye saw in nature and for the qualities of pictorial form
that he achieved through a unique treatment of space, mass, and
color. Cézanne was a contemporary of
the impressionists, but he went beyond their interests in the
individual brushstroke and the fall of light onto objects, to create,
in his words, "something more solid and durable, like the art of the
museums."
Cézanne was
born at Aix-en-Provence in the south of France on Jan. 19, 1839. He
went to school in Aix, forming a close friendship with the novelist
Emile Zola. He also studied law there from 1859 to 1861, but at the
same time he continued attending drawing classes. Against the
implacable resistance of his father, he made up his mind that he
wanted to paint and in 1861 joined Zola in Paris. His father's
reluctant consent at that time brought him financial support and,
later, a large inheritance on which he could live without difficulty.
In Paris he met Camille
Pissarro and came to know others of the impressionist group, with
whom he would exhibit in 1874 and 1877. Cézanne, however,
remained an outsider to their circle; from 1864 to 1869 he submitted
his work to the official Salon and saw it consistently rejected. His
paintings of 1865-70 form what is usually called his early "romantic"
period. Extremely personal in character, it deals with bizarre
subjects of violence and fantasy in harsh, somber colors and
extremely heavy paintwork.
Thereafter, as
Cézanne rejected that kind of approach and worked his way out
of the obsessions underlying it, his art is conveniently divided into
three phases. In the early 1870s, through a mutually helpful
association with Pissarro, with whom he painted outside Paris at
Auvers, he assimilated the principles of color and lighting of
impressionism and loosened up his brushwork; yet he retained his own
sense of mass and the interaction of planes, as in House of the
Hanged Man (1873; Musee d'Orsay, Paris).
In the late 1870s
Cézanne entered the phase known as "constructive,"
characterized by the grouping of parallel, hatched brushstrokes in
formations that build up a sense of mass in themselves. He continued in this style until the
early 1890s, when, in his series of paintings titled Card Players
(1890-92), the upward curvature of the players' backs creates a sense
of architectural solidity and thrust, and the intervals between
figures and objects have the appearance of live cells of space and
atmosphere.
Finally, living as a
solitary in Aix rather than alternating between the south and Paris,
Cézanne moved into his late phase. Now he concentrated on a
few basic subjects: still lifes of studio objects built around such
recurring elements as apples, statuary, and tablecloths; studies of
bathers, based upon the male model and drawing upon a combination of
memory, earlier studies, and sources in the art of the past; and
successive views of the Mont Sainte-Victoire, a nearby landmark,
painted from his studio looking across the intervening valley. The
landscapes of the final years, much affected by Cézanne's
contemporaneous practice in watercolor, have a more transparent and
unfinished look, while the last figure paintings are at once more
somber and spiritual in mood. By the time of his death on Oct. 22,
1906, Cézanne's art had begun to be shown and seen across
Europe, and it became a fundamental influence on the Fauves, the
cubists, and virtually all advanced art of the early 20th century
(see Fauvism and cubism).
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Cézanne was a contemporary of
the impressionists, but he went beyond their interests in the
individual brushstroke and the fall of light onto objects, to create,
in his words, "something more solid and durable, like the art of the
museums."
He continued in this style until the
early 1890s, when, in his series of paintings titled Card Players
(1890-92), the upward curvature of the players' backs creates a sense
of architectural solidity and thrust, and the intervals between
figures and objects have the appearance of live cells of space and
atmosphere.
