Paul Cézanne was a French painter, one of the greatest of the Post-Impressionists, whose works and ideas were influential in the aesthetic development of many 20th-century artists and art movements, especially Cubism.
Background
Paul Cézanne was born on January 19, 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, France, into the family of Louis Auguste Cézanne and Anne Elisabeth Honorine (Aubert) Cézanne. His father, a native of Saint-Zacharie, was the co-founder of a banking firm, that prospered throughout the artist's life, affording him financial security, that was unavailable to most of his contemporaries and eventually resulting in a large inheritance. Paul's mother was characterized as "vivacious and romantic, but quick to take offence". It was from her, that Cézanne got his conception and vision of life.
Paul had two younger sisters - Marie and Rose.
Education
It was at the age of ten, that Paul enrolled at the Saint Joseph school in Aix-en-Provence. Three years later, in 1852, he was admitted to the Collège Bourbon in Aix-en-Provence (present-day Collège Mignet) and remained there for six years, though in the last two years he was a day scholar. At the college, Paul befriended Émile Zola and Baptistin Baille and the three friends came to be known as "Les Trois Inséparables" (The Three Inseparables).
It was in 1857, that Cézanne enrolled at the Free Municipal School of Drawing, located in Aix-en-Provence as well, where he studied drawing under the guidance of Joseph Gibert, who was a Spanish monk. Later, during the period from 1858 to 1861, Paul studied at the Law School of Aix-Marseille University. While there, he also took drawing lessons.
Paul decided at an early age to pursue some kind of artistic career. His early work, comprised of figures in landscapes and plain landscapes, was mostly produced out of imagination. By the mid-1860's, Paul was an established artist and most of his paintings used baleful, heavy tones and were characterized by morbid themes. Around this time, by Napoleon III's decree, the works of young Impressionists painters were showcased at the Salon des Refuses instead of the usual, Academie des Beaux-Arts.
Most of Cezanne's early works were inspired by the Impressionist works of these dejected artists, but his strained personal ties with them led to his usage of murky tones in his work. From 1861 to 1870, Cezanne painted a series of paintings with a palette knife and called these works "une couillarde". His later paintings and sketches from the period between 1867 and 1869 were based on suggestive and intense themes, including "Women Dressing", "The Rape" and "The Murder".
When the Franco-Prussian War commenced, Cezanne and his mistress settled in Marseilles, France, where he began painting landscapes. From 1874 to 1877, many of his paintings were displayed at Impressionist exhibitions, some of which were severely criticized. During the period of isolation, from the late 1870's to the early 1890's, Cézanne developed his mature style. His landscapes from this period, such as "The Sea at L'Estaque", are perhaps the first masterpieces of the mature Cézanne.
As the 19th century came to a close, Cézanne's art was increasing in depth, in concentrated richness of colour and in skill of composition. He felt capable of creating a new vision. From 1890 to 1905, he produced masterpieces, one after another - ten variations of the "Mont Sainte-Victoire", three versions of the "Boy in a Red Waist-Coat", countless still-life images, and the "Bathers" series, in which he attempted to return to the classic tradition of the nude and explore his concern for its sculptural effect in relation to the landscape. He was obsessed with his work, which was time-consuming since he painted slowly.
By the turn of the century, the painter's fame had begun to spread, and, since he was rarely seen by anyone, he became something of a legendary figure. He exhibited at the widely attended annual Salon des Indépendants in 1899 and at the Universal Exposition, held in Paris in 1900, and his works were finally sought after by galleries. The Caillebotte collection opened at the Luxembourg Gallery in Paris with two Cézannes. The National Gallery in Berlin purchased a landscape as early as 1900. Young artists esteemed him; in 1901, the young Symbolist, Maurice Denis, painted "Homage à Cézanne", a picture of artists, admiring one of his still lifes.
Cézanne's last period, the fruit of intense meditation in solitude, reached the heights of lyricism, achieving in its revelation of life in nature what only the greatest artists can attain in their lifetime. In the apparent immobility of the Provençal countryside, he found geologic forces, trapped in the rocks, powerful saps, coursing through the trees. With a few light brushstrokes, this sick and misanthropic old man, shut up in his studio, was able to breathe life into the last Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings (1898–1902) and the views of Château-Noir. In the last of the great "Bathers" paintings (1900-1905), he succeeded in integrating monumental nudes with a landscape in his structural vision of reality.
Jug, Curtain and Fruit Bowl (Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier)
L'Estaque, Melting Snow
Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley
Portrait of Madame Cézanne with Loosened Hair
Pyramid of Skulls
The Basket of Apples
The Bathers
The Boy in the Red Vest
The Card Players
The Murder
Landscape with Mill
The Kiss of the Muse
The Four Seasons, Autumn
The Four Seasons, Spring
The Four Seasons, Summer
The Four Seasons, Winter
Interior with Two Women and a Child
A Male Nude
Fisherman on the Rocks
Portrait of a Man
Portrait of Emile Zola
Seascape
Self-Portrait
The Judgement of Paris
Woman with Parrot
Father of the Artist
Landscape in the Ile de France
Still Life with Bread and Eggs
Head of an Old Man
Marion and Valabregue Posing for a Picture
Portrait of a Man in a Blue Cap, or Uncle Dominique
Portrait of a Young Man
Portrait of Anthony Valabregue
Portrait of Uncle Dominique
Portrait of Uncle Dominique as a Monk
Portrait of Uncle Dominique in a Turban
Portrait of Uncle Dominique in Profile
Promenade
Still Life Bread and Leg of Lamb
Still Life with Skull, Candle and Book
Sugar Bowl, Pears and Blue Cup
The Artist's Father Reading his Newspaper
The Lion and the Basin at Jas de Bouffan
Uncle Dominique as a Lawyer
View of Bonnieres
Guillaumin by the Road
Christ in Limbo
Clearing
House in Provence
Landscape with Fountain
Mont Sainte-Victoire
Near Aix En Provence
Neried and Tritons
Portrait of Marie Cezanne, the Artist's Sister
Rue des Saules. Montmartre
Sorrow
The Abduction
The Artist's Mother
The Negro Scipio
Women Dressing
Rocks
Bend in the River
Portrait of Achille Emperaire
Portrait of an Old Man
Road in Provence
Rock in the Forest of Fontainbleau
The Murder
Girl at the Piano (Overture to Tannhauser)
Luncheon on the Grass
A Modern Olympia
Bathers
Factories Near Mont de Cengle
Landscape of Provence
Pastoral, or Idyll
Paul Alexis Reading a Manuscript to Emile Zola
Paul Alexis Reading at Zola's House
Still Life Skull and Waterjug
Still Life with Green Pot and Pewter Jug
The Barque of Dante (after Delacroix)
The Black Marble Clock
The Feast. The Banquet of Nebuchadnezzar
The Manor House at Jas de Bouffan
The Railway Cutting
The Temptation of St. Anthony
Fortune Mation
Gustave Boyer in a Straw Hat
Religion
It was on February 22, 1839, that Paul was baptized in the Église de la Madeleine, a Roman Catholic church in Aix-en-Provence, with his grandmother and uncle Louis as godparents, and became a devout Catholic later in life.
Views
Cézanne regarded color, line and "form" as constituting one and the same thing, or inseparable aspects for describing how the human eye actually experiences nature.
Unsatisfied with the Impressionist dictum, that painting is primarily a reflection of visual perception, Cézanne sought to make of his artistic practice a new kind of analytical discipline. In his hands, the canvas itself takes on the role of a screen, where an artist's visual sensations are registered as he gazes intensely, and often repeatedly, at a given subject.
Cézanne applied his pigments to the canvas in a series of discrete, methodical brushstrokes as though he was "constructing" a picture, rather than "painting" it. Thus, his work remains true to an underlying architectural ideal: every portion of the canvas should contribute to its overall structural integrity.
In Cézanne's mature pictures, even a simple apple might display a distinctly sculptural dimension. It is as if each item of still life, landscape or portrait had been examined not from one, but several or more angles, its material properties then recombined by the artist as no mere copy, but as what Cézanne called "a harmony, parallel to nature". It was this aspect of Cézanne's analytical, time-based practice, that led the future Cubists to regard him as their true mentor.
Quotations:
"Light is a thing, that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else - by color."
"I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion."
"We live in a rainbow of chaos."
"Right now a moment of time is passing by! We must become that moment."
"Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations."
"Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience."
"The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it."
"A work of art, which did not begin in emotion, is not art."
"You must think. The eye is not enough; it needs to think as well."
Personality
Paul had a very unstable personality, which led to numerous depressions almost immediately, when he found, that he was not as proficient technically as some of the students. Moreover, Cézanne had always found it difficult to get along with people.
Physical Characteristics:
Cézanne suffered from diabetes for a long time. In the course of time, the illness became more serious. In October 1906, the painter succumbed to a harsh chill, caught while working in the fields. He died a few days later.
Quotes from others about the person
"Except for Van Gogh, no one in modern art has made stronger demands on aesthetic receptivity, than Cézanne." - Julius Meier-Graef, a German art critic and novelist
Connections
Cézanne married Marie-Hortense Fiquet on April 28, 1886. In January 1872, Marie-Hortense gave birth to their son, Paul.
Father:
Louis Auguste Cézanne
Mother:
Anne Elisabeth Honorine (Aubert) Cézanne
child:
Paul Cézanne
Wife:
Marie-Hortense (Fiquet) Cézanne
Sister:
Marie Cézanne
Sister:
Rose (Cézanne) Conil
Friend:
Émile Zola
Friend:
Baptistin Baille
Friend:
Camille Pissarro
mentor:
Joseph Gibert
References
Paul Cézanne
This biography reexamines Cézanne's life and art, discussing the key events and people, who shaped his work, and placing his oeuvre in the context of nineteenth and early twentieth-century art and culture.
2016
The Letters of Paul Cézanne
This translation of Cézanne's letters includes more than twenty, that were previously unpublished, and reproduces the sketches and caricatures, with which Cézanne occasionally illustrated his words.
2013
Paul Cézanne
"Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists" series combines a delightful mix of full-color historical reproductions, photos and hilarious cartoon-style illustrations, that bring to life the works of renowned artists, combining poignant anecdotes with important factual information for readers (ages 8-9). Clever illustrations and story lines, together with full-color reproductions of Paul Cezanne's actual works, give children a light, yet realistic overview of this artist's life and style.
Cézanne: A Life
This work represents a major biography of the brilliant work and restless life of Paul Cézanne, the most influential painter of his time and beyond, whose vision revolutionized the role of the painter and changed the way artists would see and depict the world forever after.
2012
Cézanne: Metamorphoses
This remarkable thematic survey offers up an entirely new way of looking at and thinking about Paul Cézanne's oeuvre.
2017
Cézanne: Landscape into Art
This classic study, now expanded, juxtaposes Cézanne's paintings with photographs of the landscapes they depict.
1996
Paul Cézanne: Finished - Unfinished
The story of Cezanne's fame and influence would be incomplete without taking into account the impact of his unfinished paintings. This book is the first to take an extended look at these paintings. Detailed essays, that compare finished paintings with so-called unifinished ones, provide a completely new insight into the creative proces of the "father of modernism".
2000
The World Is an Apple: The Still Lifes of Paul Cézanne
This ground-breaking volume offers a reappraisal of Paul Cézanne's achievement in the genre of still life. It examines his paintings within the context of his artistic development and professional self-fashioning, and probes the shifting scientific and critical discourses, that shaped both his practice and the reception of his pictures.
2014
The Pixels of Paul Cézanne: And Reflections on Other Artists
"The Pixels of Paul Cezanne" is a collection of essays by Wim Wenders, in which he presents his observations and reflections on the fellow artists, who have influenced, shaped and inspired him.