Paul Cézanne (Part 1) – Origins of Modern Art
In the south of France,
close to the former capital of the Provence,
Aix-en-Provence,
is a steep rise in the landscape,
the limestone mountain ridge: Sainte-Victoire,
reaching heights of thousand meters.
This massif has a rich history.
Here, hundred years B.C.,
the Romans conquered the Teutons.
Possibly the name of the massif refers to that victory.
Everywhere you can find caves and grottos,
and since the classics
the ridge is considered to have been the residence
of all sorts of saints
At the west-side the ridge ends with the Mont Sainte-Victoire.
This mountain commands the surroundings of Aix-en-Provence.
The famous painter Paul Cézanne has depicted the Mont Sainte-Victoire
on about 30 oilpaintings and 45 watercolors.
He was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839 and died there in 1906.
Cézanne painted his own portrait on a number of occasions.
Now follow some examples in chronological order,
together with some photographs.
Cézanne’s good friend and fellow, French artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir
painted this pastel-portrait in 1880.
Later, Cézanne painted a self-portrait,
and took Renoir’s portrait as a model.
Thus, unlike the other self-portraits,
this was painted without the use of a mirror.
While preserving the dimensions and composition of Renoir’s mild portrayal of him,
Cézanne's version is harsh and withdrawn.
The wallpaper with its diamond pattern
appears in a number of Cézanne's still lifes.
Besides self-portraits, Cézanne portrayed many persons in his vicinity.
This is for instance his “Father Reading his Newspaper”.
In his early work, his “Dark or Romantic period”,
inspired by the example of Gustave Courbet
he used a palette knife and thick, dark paint,
as in this portrait of a “Woman with Parrot”.
This technique is called “impasto”.
Unfortunately, it seems that this painting did not very well stand the tooth of ages.
>>Cézanne probably used an unsuitable transparent paint.<<
In his his mature period, Cézanne used much thinner paint,
as in this portrait of his wife.
Like many of his portraits,
this portrait is nearly void of any hint of the personality
or inner character of the subject,
the work seems more an exercise in form.
He often tips the body and head of the sitter,
in this portrait six degrees to the left.
This ingredient of Cézanne’s composition increases the tension and
dynamics of the picture.
It is not clear if he was theoretically
and intellectually fully aware of this so-called “distortion”.
You can see for yourself how it looks when sitter and background
are at right angles to each other.
This “Man in a Room”, painted in1890, stands five degrees out of plumb.
Such a deviation from reality
could be regarded as a foreboding of twenty-century modern art.
Cézanne attempts to realize his individual optical sensations
and not to depict the reality of linear perspective
as present in a two dimensional photograph,
in principal, the artistic endeavour of most of his predecessors.
It is further suggested that, contrary to straight-line perspective,
a concave sphere of vision is represented in this painting.
To say a bit more of Cézanne’s handling of perspective,
which will be further discussed in Part II of our series on Cézanne,
we will return to his early portrait of his father.
As we can derive from the base,
the positions of the chair legs are clearly not in accord
with straight line perspective.
This deviation from perspective rules is also characteristic for his mature paintings.
In this “Portrait of the Man with Arms Folded” or Crossed,
created in circa 1899,
we can see another deviation from standard painting rules,
namely, the incorporation of more than one point of view in a picture.
According to the arched eye and eyebrow,
the right half of the face seems seems to be seen from below’.
However, the left part of the face seems to be seen from above,
the eye brow looks something like a flipped swung dash.
A multiple viewpoint in one picture
is also used by Leonardo da Vinci in his painting:
“The Virgin and Child with St Anne”.
The Virgin Mary, her child and her mother,
are seen from a standard frontal point of view.
However the icy lunar landscape in the background is seen from above.
Hence, in spite of the rather earthly scene,
the three holy figures seem to be situated in more celestial spheres.
This red chalk drawing from 1511 might show
that also Michelangelo made use of more than one viewpoint in a picture.
The drawing is a preparatory study for a fresco in the Sistine Chapel.
At the right, a reproduction of the fresco,
dating from before the restoration of the chapel.
For reasons of clarity we removed
the separately drawn, bent arm at the left.
The left side of this “Ignudo”, or sitting male nude,
is drawn with the viewpoint at the left.
However, the upper part of the right shoulder
seems to be drawn with a viewing point at the right.
In 1937, Pablo Picasso applied three points of view
in his portrait of Dora Maar.
The right part of the face is depicted as seen from the mid left below.
The left part of the face is shown “en profil”,
thus as seen from the left.
However, the left eye is a profile drawing from the right.
By the way, it was Pablo Picasso, born 42 years after Cézanne,
who seems to have said: “My one and only master,
Cézanne was like the father of us all.”
Cézanne is indeed often described as the “father of modern art".
