CÉZANNE, PAUL

CÉZANNE, PAUL (1839–1906), French artist and forerunner of twentieth-century avant-garde artistic movements.

Paul Cézanne was born on 19 January 1839 at Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France. His father was a wealthy banker. From 1856 to 1858, Cézanne studied academic drawing in Aix. In 1859, despite his father's disapproval, he decided to dedicate himself to painting as a career.

At the urging of his childhood friend, Émile Zola (1840–1902), in 1861 Cézanne settled in Paris where he painted freely at the Académie Suisse and studied the old masters at the Louvre. But, having failed the entrance exams to the École des beaux-arts, he returned to Aix feeling that he had no artistic future. While working full time in his father's lucrative banking business, Cézanne still took art lessons. In late 1862, he returned to Paris but failed again to gain entrance to the École des beaux-arts. Back in the obscurity of Aix, Cézanne painted regularly but the Salons refused his works. This early Romantic period, which consisted of figure compositions and landscapes, is marked by vigorous light-dark contrasts (The Abduction, 1867). Angered at being denied entry to the École des beaux-arts for a third time, in 1866 Cézanne sent a letter of protest against the jury system to the director of the school, an act that inspired Zola to pen his novel Mon Salon in defense of modern painting.

From 1866 to 1869, Cézanne alternated his stays between Aix and Paris, where he socialized with those modern young painters who would come to be known as the impressionists. In 1869, he started a love affair with model Marie-Hortense Fiquet, who would bear him a son in 1872, and began living with her at L'Estaque on the Mediterranean coast. Over the years, Cézanne would paint thirty-three portraits of her, all entitled Madame Cézanne.

cÉzanne's mature styles

After 1870, like the impressionists, Cézanne began working outdoors and building form with color rather than with strong tonal contrasts. During this impressionist period that stretched from 1871 to 1877, he painted his first important landscapes, including The House of the Hanged Man at Auvers (1873) and Landscape near Auvers (1874). In 1874 and 1877, he participated in the first and third impressionist exhibitions. But Cézanne's association with the impressionist circle came to a gradual end as he attempted to develop his own independent style. He returned to Aix and for the next ten years, highly irritable and suffering from diabetes, he worked in almost complete isolation.

From 1878 to 1887, Cézanne created the paintings of his constructivist period as, looking for an ever-greater formal organization of the natural world, he strove to capture the exact relation between structure, organization, and color. Between 1883 and 1887, he painted some of his most celebrated landscapes, including many views of Mont Sainte-Victoire (Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from Gardanne, 1885–1886), of L'Estaque (Houses at L'Estaque, 1883–1885; Rock at L'Estaque, 1882), and of the Bay of Marseille (Bay of Marseille Seen from L'Estaque, 1883–1885), as well as some noteworthy still lifes and figure compositions.

In 1886, he married Fiquet, and his father died, leaving him a small fortune. He broke with Zola after the publication of the latter's L'oeuvre, which features an unflattering character modeled on Cézanne's cantankerous personality.

From 1888 to 1898, he created the paintings of his synthetic period, in which he achieved a new geometric and expressive order. Anticipating cubist explorations of space, Cézanne translated houses,

landscapes, and other subjects into cones, cylinders, and spheres, as he sought to synthesize multiple planes of color and abstracted images. He painted masterpieces like The Kitchen Table (1888–1890), The Card Players (1890–1892), and The Bathers (1890–1891). His fame growing, in 1895 Cézanne had his first one-man show in Paris.

the late cÉzanne

In 1899, Cézanne left his wife and son and was distraught over the break-up for the rest of his life. The French avant-garde became aware of his importance. Post-impressionist painters traveled to Provence to seek his counsel. Annoyed at first, he finally seemed to welcome the attention.

From 1900 to 1906, Cézanne created the paintings and watercolors of his late period, his art becoming more and more abstract and geometric as forms were created from interlocking color surfaces and the disappearance of the background (The Park of Château-Noir, 1900; Nudes in Landscape, 1900–1905; Large Bathers, 1899–1906), and he began writing down his views about painting. These developments set the ground rules for the debates about painting in the early twentieth century. In 1902 the death of Zola affected him deeply. Two years later Cézanne was given a whole exhibition room at the Salon d'Automne, which established his European reputation. In 1906, caught in a storm while painting outdoors, he collapsed and died in Aix, on 22 October, of pneumonia.

See alsoAvant-Garde; France; Impressionism; Zola, Émile.

bibliography

Primary Sources

Bernard, Émile. Souvenirs sur Paul Cézanne. Paris, 1911. Letters focus on Cézanne's artistic theories and upon general aesthetic questions.

Doran, Michael, ed. Conversations with Cézanne. Translated by Julie Lawrence Cochran. Berkeley, Calif., 2001. Biographical and stylistic documents on Cézanne's last ten years, including interviews with the painter and correspondence with Émile Bernard.

Kendall, Richard, ed. Cézanne by Himself. London, 1988. Previously unpublished documents by Cézanne on his late paintings and works on paper.

Rewald, John, ed. Paul Cézanne: Letters. Translated by Marguerite Kay. Oxford, U.K., 1941. Reprint, New York, 1995. Cézanne's ideas on art are to be found in these numerous letters to friends, critics, and fellow painters, assembled and presented by the renowned British art historian John Rewald.

Secondary Sources

Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Nina Maria. Cézanne and Provence: The Painter in His Culture. Chicago, 2003. Documents Cézanne's regional alliance, which deeply affected his stylistic innovations.

Baumann, Felix A., Walter Feilchenfeldt, and Hubertus Gassner, eds. Cézanne and the Dawn of Modern Art. Essen, Germany, and New York, 2005.

Becks-Malorny, Ulrike. Cézanne. London, 2001. Provides an excellent introduction to the artist's life, work, and stylistic periods.

Cachin, Isabelle, and Françoise Cachin, eds. Cézanne. Paris, 1996. Exemplary exhibition catalog published in conjunction with the major international retrospective organized on the centenary of Cézanne's first solo exhibition mounted in Paris.

Dorival, Bernard. Cézanne. Translated by H. H. A. Thackthwaite. New York, 1948. Most important introductory text to the life and art of Cézanne published before 1950.

Faure, Élie. Paul Cézanne. Translated by Walter Pacht. New York, 1913. Classic study of the poetic significance of Cézanne's subject matters by one of the best-known French art historians of the first half of the twentieth century.

Fry, Roger. Cézanne: A Study of His Development. London, 1927. First serious study of his artistic evolution.

Mack, Gerstle. Paul Cézanne. New York, 1935. First pre-World War II English-language biography that chronicled Cézanne's life and artistic evolution.

Rewald, John. Paul Cézanne, A Biography. New York, 1937. Reprint, New York, 1968. Still one of the best biographies of Cézanne by one of the world's leading authority on French impressionism.

——. The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: A Catalogue Raisonné. 2 vols. New York, 1996, Definitive research tool.

Rubin, William, ed. Cézanne: The Late Work. New York, 1977. Published on the occasion of the landmark 1977 retrospective exhibition held at the MOMA.

Schapiro, Meyer. Paul Cézanne. New York, 1952. Thorough introduction to the stylistic evolution of Cézanne by America's best-known twentieth century art historian.

Wechsler, Judith, ed. Cézanne in Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1975. Documented reference work for art historians and students alike that chronicles and contextualizes Cézanne's life and art.

Marie Carani