Cézanne at Tate Modern huge gift to art history
Paul Cézanne a pioneer and innovator of modern art
Portrait of the Artist with Pink Background, Paul Cezanne 1875. Paris, Musée d’Orsay Photo©RMN Grand Palais (musée d’Orsay) / Adrien Didierj
Cézanne recognised passion for art
Paul Cézanne’s passion was only ever art. History has been kind to his paintings, to which this show, Cézanne at Tate Modern, is a testimony.
He is recognised as an innovator in modern art and is credited by Pablo Picasso for techniques that directly led to Cubism.
Still Life with Apples, Paul Cézanne, 1893–1894, J Paul Getty Museum
But for much of his life he went unrecognized, refused by art institutions, discouraged by family and friends and chastised by art critics. None of this deterred him from his love of oil painting.
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Cézanne was born in 1839, the son of a wealthy but domineering banker in the rural south of France Aix-en-Provence.
Mont Sainte-Victoire, Paul Cézanne, 1902-6, Philadelphia Museum of Art
At the age of thirteen, he became close friends with Émile Zola who would go on to become one of France’s favourite authors and a champion for the underprivileged. At the age of twenty-one, the painter and the author moved to Paris to continue their education.
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Acceptability as an artist required proper education at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, but Cézanne was not accepted.
Still Life with Plaster Cupid, Paul Cezanne, 1895, The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust). Photo © The Courtauld
Instead, he attended Académie Suisse. The facility was almost free and provided artists with a collective space to paint but did not provide a curriculum.
Students learned from each other, by copying Titian, Rubens and Michelangelo paintings at the Louvre Museum and through the continual process of painting.
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It was here that he met the future Impressionist painters Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Camille Pissarro.
1860s interesting times for Parisian artists
The 1860s were interesting times for Parisian artists. The Emperor of France, Napoleon III was halfway through demolishing mediaeval Paris and rebuilding it.
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Beautiful as it is today, it is not surprising artists frequently took steam trains to the countryside to escape the noise and pollution of construction.
The François Zola Dam (Mountains in Provence), Paul Cézanne, 1877-8, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum of Wales
Painting en plein air (outdoors) was made possible with the developments of metal paint tubes, portable French box easels and metal ferrule brushes — the tools necessary for newly emerging Impressionist painters.
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At the urging of Émile Zola, Cézanne stayed in Paris but only for five months before returning home to submit to his father and work at the family’s bank. This did not work out, and he went back to Paris and was again rejected by Académie des Beaux-Arts and the Salon.
Still Life with Apples, Paul Cezanne, 1893–1894, The J Paul Getty Museum
For decades Cézanne vainly submitted paintings to the Salon of the Académie. The Paris Salon dated back to 1667 and was the official art exhibition of the Académie des beaux-arts.
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Not only did they disapprove of his painting techniques, but they also disapproved of his style, which was not Neoclassical or Romantic.
Salon des Refusés launched new artists
He favoured still lifes and landscapes, which until that time were relevant only as backdrops in grand paintings of heroics or perfect human beauty.
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Cézanne was not alone in frustration with the conservative control by Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 1863, to counter the growing agitation in artistic circles over painters refused by the Salon, the emperor Napoleon III decreed the opening of a Salon des Refusés, but art critics mocked the show and disparaged Cézanne.
Bathers, Paul Cezanne, 1874-5, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Joan Whitney Payson, 1975
Camille Pissarro invited Cézanne to paint with him in 1872. Cézanne moved near him to Pontoise, France and for the next two years, he learned the techniques and theories of Impressionism.
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The two painted en plein air, and Pissarro encouraged Cézanne to paint with primary colours and their derivatives, to refrain from using black for linear contouring and instead used gradations of colour to create shape and to make short brush strokes without blending the paint with nearby colours.
Seated Man, Paul Cezanne 1905-6 © Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Cézanne was part of the first and third Impressionist exhibitions that took place in 1874 and 1877. The shows and Cézanne were ravaged by critics and were a commercial bust.
After that Cézanne broke away from the Impressionists and retreated to the countryside in the South of France. He did not exhibit publicly for nearly twenty years.
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He did continue to submit paintings to the Salon, and one painting was accepted in 1882 but only because a friend was on the acceptance committee. It was positioned in an obscure location and went unnoticed by most visitors.
Sous-Bois, Paul Cezanne, 1894, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Wallis Foundation Fund in memory of Hal B. Wallis
In 1886, his father died and left him a large inheritance, freeing him from financial concerns. That same year Émile Zola published L’Oeuvre (The Masterpiece) about a successful writer and a failed painter. Cézanne took it personally, and the two had a falling out.
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But he continued to paint landscapes, still lifes and portraits. Free of the pressure to sell his paintings, he developed his own mature style that reduced the visible world into the most basic underlying shapes, yet also retained a painterly quality.
The Basket of Apples, Paul Cezanne, c. 1893, The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection
He painted slowly and with great care, often doing many studies on the same subject. He disregarded approved Salon traditions like shading and perspective.
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His paintings were without a visible source of lighting and had no vanishing point for the eye to move beyond. These innovations foreshadowed techniques that would be used by abstract painters.
Portrait of the Artist’s Son, Paul Cezanne, 1881-2. Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie, Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume Collection
Artists from Paris began to recognise his art was something original. In 1895, at the urging of Pissarro, Monet and Renoir, Cézanne agreed to a one-man exhibition of over 100 canvases by art dealer Ambroise Vollard. From this point forward, Cézanne’s talent was appreciated.
In 1897, the Berlin National Gallery was the first museum to buy one of his paintings.
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In 1906 Cézanne, who was already diabetic, got soaked in a rainstorm while painting. He came down with pneumonia and never recovered.
Picasso and Matisse awed by Cézanne’s innovations
The Autumn Gallery in Paris had a posthumous retrospective of Cézanne in 1907. Fifty-six of his works were presented.
Bathers, Paul Cezanne, c.1894-1905, Presented by the National Gallery, purchased with a special grant and the aid of the Max Rayne Foundation, 1964
The retrospective was seen by two young painters, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Both were awed by Cézanne’s innovations.
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Picasso experimented with Cézanne’s techniques, which led to the invention of Cubism in 1909. Matisse applied Cézanne’s focus on colour to develop Fauvism.
Château Noir, Paul Cézanne, 1900-4, National Gallery of Art, Washington
Cézanne once claimed, “With an apple, I will astonish Paris.” That is precisely what he did. Cezanne’s still lifes, landscapes and paintings of bathers gave licence to generations of artists to break the rule book. The history of painting was never to be the same again.
Text Martin Wray / Photos Tate Modern
