Elena Rossi
Paul Cézanne was a French Post-Impressionist painter whose works influenced the development of 20th-century art movements, especially Cubism. Cézanne's paintings introduced new modes of representation and challenged conventional values of painting in the 19th century, emphasising the integrity of the painting itself rather than the subject matter. He is known for his unique approach to perspective and his use of vibrant colours, thick layers of pigment, and constructive brushstrokes. Cézanne's works include landscapes, still lifes, and portraits, with his most famous paintings being Large Bathers (1900-1906), The Card Players, and numerous views of L'Estaque, a favourite destination in the south of France. While the exact number of Cézanne's paintings is unknown, WikiArt lists 588 artworks attributed to the artist.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Total number of artworks | 588 |
| Known for | Post-Impressionist paintings |
| Notable works | Large Bathers, The Card Players, Seated Peasant, Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses, The Fisherman (Fantastic Scene), Still Life with Jar, Cup, and Apples, Mont Sainte-Victoire, The Gulf of Marseille Seen from L’Estaque, Gardanne |
| Artistic influences | Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat |
| Influenced | Cubism, Fauvism, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse |
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Influences and early works
It is estimated that Paul Cézanne produced around 900 oil paintings and 400 watercolours during his career, many of which have become some of the most famous and influential works in the history of art. Now, let's delve into the influences and early works of this renowned artist.
Paul Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence, France, in 1839, and his artistic journey began in his youth when he became acquainted with two pivotal figures: Émile Zola and Jean-Baptiste Baille. Zola, a future literary giant, was a close friend from school, and their friendship would endure until a famous falling-out in later years. Baille, meanwhile, was an older student who introduced Cézanne to the world of modern art. Through Baille, Cézanne discovered the works of Eugène Delacroix and Gustave Courbet, artists who would leave an indelible mark on his style. The young Cézanne was also influenced by the older Provençal painter Achille Emperaire, whose loose brushwork and vibrant colours would find echoes in Cézanne's later work.
In 1861, Cézanne left Aix-en-Provence for Paris, where he intended to pursue a career as an artist. He enrolled in the Académie Suisse, where he copied paintings by the Old Masters and honed his skills. During this period, he was particularly drawn to the work of Rubens, whose use of colour and form would influence Cézanne's own developing style. He also found inspiration in the Louvre, where he studied and sketched copies of works by artists such as Tintoretto, Veronese, and Caravaggio. These early years in Paris were formative, as he began to develop his unique approach to painting, combining a passion for colour with a rigorous interest in structural form.
Cézanne's early works often featured scenes from his native Provence, including landscapes and figures in traditional dress. One of his earliest known paintings, 'Le Pont sur la Route Près de l'Ancienne Porte Saint-Martin' (The Bridge on the Road Near the Old Saint-Martin Gate) (1860–61), demonstrates his early interest in landscape painting and his developing skill in capturing the effects of light and atmosphere. Another key work from this period is 'La Maison du Pendu' (The House of the Hanged Man) (1873), which showcases his evolving style, with its bold colours and thickly applied paint.
During the 1860s and early 1870s, Cézanne's work was repeatedly rejected by the official Salon in Paris, which favoured more traditional and academic styles. Undeterred, he exhibited with the Salon des Refusés in 1863 and later with the Impressionist group, although he never fully aligned himself with their movement. It was during this period that he began to develop his unique style, characterised by bold, expressive brushwork and a fascination with geometric structure. He became increasingly interested in the interplay of colours and the creation of a sense of volume and space through the careful arrangement of forms.
Cézanne's early works laid the foundation for his later achievements and contributed significantly to his reputation as one of the most influential artists of the 19th century. His early influences, from the Old Masters to the modern artists of his time, helped shape his unique approach to colour, form, and structure. As his career progressed, Cézanne would continue to develop and refine his style, ultimately earning him a place in the canon of modern art.
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Development of style
Paul Cézanne was a French Post-Impressionist painter whose works influenced the development of 20th-century art movements, especially Cubism. Cézanne's art was misunderstood and discredited by the public during his lifetime, but he eventually challenged all the conventional values of painting in the 19th century.
Cézanne's early works were influenced by Romanticism and Realism. He was inspired by the revolutionary spirit of the Realist painters, led by Gustave Courbet, and the Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix, whose compositions emphasised colour instead of line. During this period, Cézanne began to develop a style that was violent and dark, with harsh extremes of light and shadow and a looseness and vigour that can be traced to the influence of Delacroix.
In the early 1860s, Cézanne created a series of portraits of his uncle Dominique Aubert, variously costumed as a lawyer, an artist, and a monk. These works exemplify the vigour with which Cézanne painted during the 1860s, with thick layers of pigment applied with a palette knife. In 1863, he was associated with the most advanced members of the Realist group, including Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
In the mid-1860s, Cézanne formed a friendship with Pissarro, which began as a relationship between master and disciple. Over the next decade, they painted landscapes together and Pissarro exerted a formative influence on the younger artist. In the late 1870s to the early 1890s, Cézanne developed his mature style, creating landscapes that contain compositions of grand and calm horizontals, with clean, up-and-down strokes creating a prismatic effect.
In his later career, Cézanne became more interested in working from direct observation and gradually developed a light, airy painting style. In his mature work, he developed a solidified, almost architectural style of painting. He structurally ordered whatever he perceived into simple forms and colour planes, striving to unite the observation of nature with the permanence of classical composition. Cézanne's exploration of geometric simplification and optical phenomena inspired Picasso, Braque, Metzinger, Gleizes, Gris, and others to experiment with complex views of the same subject and eventually to the fracturing of form.
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Mature works
Paul Cézanne was a prolific painter who created a vast body of work during his lifetime. While the exact number of his artworks is difficult to pinpoint, estimates range from 900 to 1000 paintings, with some sources citing even higher numbers. Now, let's focus on his mature works:
Paul Cézanne's mature period began in the late 1880s and extended until his death in 1906. During this phase, he fully embraced his unique style, solidifying his place as one of the most influential artists of the 19th century. Cézanne's mature works demonstrate his mastery of form, color, and brushwork, as he continued to explore and refine his artistic vision.
One of the defining characteristics of Cézanne's mature period is his exploration of still life as a subject matter. He created numerous still-life paintings, often featuring fruits, vases, and table settings. These still lifes served as a platform for him to experiment with form and color, arranging objects to create complex compositions. Cézanne's still lifes from this period are known for their sense of solidity and volume, with objects carefully arranged to create a sense of balance and harmony.
During this time, Cézanne also returned to painting the human figure, often in the form of bathers and card players. His treatment of the figure was unique, as he sought to capture the underlying structure and geometry of the human form rather than focusing on realistic representation. Cézanne's figures are often robust and solid, with a sense of weight and presence. He explored the effects of light and color on the figure, using brushwork to create a sense of volume and form.
In addition to still lifes and figure paintings, landscapes also feature prominently in Cézanne's mature works. He often painted the countryside around his home in Aix-en-Provence, capturing the rolling hills, mountains, and lush greenery of the region. Cézanne's landscapes from this period demonstrate his interest in the structural qualities of nature, as he sought to convey a sense of order and harmony in his depictions of the natural world.
Cézanne's mature works also include a series of portraits, including those of his wife, Hortense Fiquet, and several self-portraits. These portraits are known for their psychological depth and intense gaze, offering a glimpse into the inner world of his subjects. Cézanne's brushwork in these portraits is loose and expressive, capturing the essence of his subjects rather than focusing on minute details.
Overall, Cézanne's mature works showcase his artistic maturity and his unwavering dedication to his unique style. He continued to push the boundaries of form, color, and brushwork, influencing generations of artists who followed. The works from this period not only solidified his reputation as a master painter but also laid the foundation for the development of modern art movements in the 20th century.
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Later works
Paul Cézanne's later works were marked by his exploration of new themes and techniques, building on his Impressionist foundations. During the late 1870s, Cézanne began working in relative isolation in southern France, focusing on still lifes, landscapes, and later, portraits. He continued to develop his unique style, distancing himself from the Impressionist movement.
In his still lifes from this period, Cézanne experimented with colour and form, abandoning his earlier use of dark palettes and dramatic tonal contrasts. He employed subtle gradations of colour to create dimension and bring objects to life, as seen in "Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses" (c. 1890) and "Still Life with Jar, Cup, and Apples" (c. 1877).
Cézanne's landscapes also underwent a transformation. He embraced the plein-air painting style, capturing the vibrant colours and brilliance of natural light in his scenes. His "Bathers" series, including "The Fisherman (Fantastic Scene)" (c. 1875) and "Large Bathers" (1900-1906), explored nudes in nature, with figures drawn from his imagination rather than life studies.
During the 1890s, Cézanne's work was discovered by the Paris avant-garde, attracting the attention of artists such as Picasso and influencing the development of 20th-century art. His series of five pictures of Provençal peasants playing cards, including "The Card Players" (c. 1890), is widely celebrated for its masterful use of colour gradations to build form and create a three-dimensional quality.
In his later years, Cézanne continued to explore new themes and techniques. He painted female bathers in the final decade of his life, including three large pictures that represented the culmination of his lifelong artistic investigations. Additionally, he repeatedly painted the same set of objects from different perspectives, interrogating their formal properties and introducing subtle effects of distortion.
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Legacy
Paul Cézanne was a French Post-Impressionist painter whose works influenced the development of many 20th-century art movements, especially Cubism. Cézanne's art, misunderstood and discredited by the public during most of his life, grew out of Impressionism and eventually challenged all the conventional values of painting in the 19th century because of his insistence on personal expression and the integrity of the painting itself, regardless of subject matter.
Cézanne introduced new modes of representation, influencing avant-garde artistic movements of the early 20th century. He altered conventional approaches to perspective and broke established rules of academic art by emphasising the underlying structure of objects in a composition and the formal qualities of art. Cézanne strove for a renewal of traditional design methods based on impressionistic colour space and colour modulation principles. This technique is apparent in "Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley" and "The Gulf of Marseille Seen from L’Estaque". In "Gardanne", he painted the landscape with intense volumetric patterns of geometric rhythms, anticipating the Cubism of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.
Cézanne's work laid the foundations for the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. His work influenced future generations of artists, including Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, who both considered Cézanne the "father of us all". One of his last paintings, the unfinished "Large Bathers" (1900-1906), is one of his most monumental works. It explored the traditional theme of nudes in nature and brought forth an original and innovative interpretation of the subject. The painting holds a significant place in art history, influencing Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907) and Matisse's "Bathers by a River" (1909-1916).
Cézanne's legacy is also seen in his influence on the artistic community during his lifetime. In 1863, the emperor Napoleon III opened the Salon des Refusés to counter the growing agitation in artistic circles over painters refused by the Salon of the Académie. Cézanne became associated with the most advanced members of this group, including Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Cézanne's friendship with Pissarro, which began as a master-disciple relationship, evolved into a collaborative working relationship. They went on landscape painting excursions together and Pissarro encouraged Cézanne to abandon his dark palette in exchange for brilliant tones and painting outdoors.
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Frequently asked questions
Paul Cézanne painted approximately 588 artworks during his career.
Cézanne's most notable works include:
- Large Bathers (1900-1906)
- The Card Players (completed around 1890)
- Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses (completed around 1890)
- The Fisherman (Fantastic Scene) (completed around 1875)
- Mont Sainte-Victoire
- The Gulf of Marseille Seen from L’Estaque
Cézanne's early works were influenced by Romanticism and Realism. He was influenced by the work of Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix and Realist painter Gustave Courbet. Later, he became closely associated with Impressionist painters such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and his work grew out of Impressionism.
