Cezanne, Paul

Some paintings by Paul Cezanne

Paul Cezanne: books

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Paul Cezanne: a biography....

(b. Jan. 19, 1839, Aix-en-Provence d. Oct. 22, 1906, Aix-en-Provence)

Paul Cézanne, the son of a wealthy banker, grew up with Emile Zola, the famous novelist. Cezanne, a highly nervous and inhibited boy, developed artistic interests at an early age, much to the dismay of his father. In 1862, after a number of family disputes, he was given a small allowance and sent to study art in Paris, where Zola had already gone. There he was introduced to the famed circle of artists who met at the Café Guerbois, which included Manet, Degas and Pisarro, but his shyness prevented him from becoming an intimate. The group was the 'new wave' in art, and produced realistic work whose style and subject matter shocked many of their contemporaries. Cezanne especially admired the romantic painter Delacroix and, among the younger masters, Courbet and Manet.

Many of Cezanne's early works were darkly tonal, but he gradually came to portray contemporary life. He was greatly influenced by Camille Pisarro, who befriended him and introduced him to the new impressionist technique of portraying light. Pisarro, like Monet and Renoir, worked outdoors: and so soon did Cezanne, painting rural scenes in bright colours. Cezanne exhibited at the first Impressionist show, but maintained the feeling of solidity in his paintings. He worked more and more in Aix after the late 1870s. He fell out with Zola over what seemed to him a slight in one of his novels. Finally, at 47, he inherited his father's fortune.

His later watercolours are pure joy. Feel the warmth and richness of the fruit and the sensuality of the fabrics in his still life (below): while in the power and light of Mont Saint-Victoire the heat and richness of the south come spilling from the canvas.

Cezanne was intensely self-critical, especially of his ability to portray the human figure. He left many works unfinished and destroyed others. He came, however, to be lionised by his fellow painters, who saw his new and original style as a necessary escape from the confines of Impressionism. Van Gogh and Gauguin were early admirers. By the time of his death he was a legend. Both his style and theory remained mysterious and cryptic; some thought him a naive primitive, others, a sophisticated master of technical procedure. The intensity of his color, coupled with the apparent rigor of his compositional organization, signaled to most that, despite the artist's own frequent despair, he had synthesized the basic expressive and representational elements of painting in a highly original manner. He is often referred to as the father of modern art.

SOME CEZANNE PRINTS

Books about Cezanne

For books about him in the U.K. please type his name in the box and press go