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CEZANNE

MARIO DE MICHELI

THAMES AND HUDSON

Life
Paul Cezanne was born at Aix-en-Provence on 19 January
1839, at the end of the decade in which all the other
impressionists were born: Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Sisley,
Monet and Renoir. His father, Louis-Auguste Cezanne, was
not a native of Aix, but had gone there at the age of thirty,
about the year 1825, and had taken part in one of the
local industries, hat-making. Biographers add that although
the Cezanne family were of French origin, they came from
Cesana, a village on the Italian slopes of Mont-Genevre
or Monginevro, above Sestriere. A young worker in the
Cezqnne hat factory, Anne-Elisabeth-Honorine Aubert, be-
came Paul's mother and was married to Louis-Auguste five
years later, when her second child, Marie, was aged three;
another girl, Rose, was born ten years after the wedding.
Louis-Auguste Cezanne was an active and enterprising man,
and in spite of the distrust felt by the population of Aix
for anyone who was a ' foreigner ', he managed to make
his way and become successful. In 1847 his sound business
acumen led him to buy up the Banque Barges which had
become insolvent, and the next year with a partner he
founded the banking firm of Cezanne et Cabasso!. So began
a new period for the Cezanne family, an era of greater
prosperity and standing. It was perhaps for reasons of
prestige that in 1859 Paul's father bought the property of
Jas de Bouffan, a mile or so west of Aix and at one time
the residence of the Governor of Provence. The property
consisted of thirty-seven acres of land enclosed by a wall,
with a magnificent garden of ancient trees and a fine
eighteenth-century villa. It was in this villa that the Cezanne
family spent their summers, and here Paul learned to un-
derstand and communicate with nature. The Jas de Bouffan
property was later to play a vital part in the artist's life;
nowhere else was he able to work more consistently or
more frequently.
Paul had now reached the age of twenty, and what had
been just an inclination towards painting was about to
become a definite vocation, although there were still many
3
doubts and discouragements to be overcome. Meanwhile,
he had already met Emile Zola and Baptiste Baille; this
meeting proved a decisive event in his ·life. At Aix they
were called ' the three inseparables '. They met in 1852
at the College Bourbon and became firm friends, and the
depth of their friendship is revealed in the eloquent
exchange of letters which lasted through their years of
maturity. Cezanne was a hard-working and serious pupil
with a special interest in the ancient languages (it is said
that he could write a hundred Latin verses in the course
of a morning). He also gained excellent marks in mathe-
matics, history and literature, and was awarded special
prizes in all these subjects. The one subject in which he
did not excel was drawing; the prizes in drawing were won
every year by Emile Zola, the future creator of the naturalist
novel. School was not the only activity shared by the three
friends. They spent their holidays together in the country-
side around Aix, fishing, swimming, reading poetry and
playing serenades under a girl's window: Zola played the
trumpet, Cezanne the clarinet. They wrote as well: dramas,
comedies, poems. For some time still Cezanne continued
to fill pages with his verse, and some critics have attempted
to trace in these pages the signs of what he later became,
that is, the greatest landscape artist of modern painting:

. . . But the yellowed leaves

At the breath of winter have lost
Their freshness, faded are the plants and grasses on
[the banks
Of the stream, while the tree, broken by the fury
[of the winds,
Waves, like an immense skeleton, its bare branches
[in the air.

It is difficult to draw a conclusion, although it is certainly

true that the landscape of his native Provence was becom-
ing implanted in Cezanne's heart ~md mind during those
summers.
These then were years of experiment and questioning.
Decisions were reached slowly, but for Cezanne painting,
was already a part of his innermost being, like a plant
4
growing a little stronger each day. In 1856 he began to
attend Professor Gibert's drawing classes at the Aix Art
School. Two years later he was awarded a second prize.
Looking at some of the works produced at this time, we
find it impossible to prophesy Cezanne's future greatness,
and above all impossible to foresee that he was to become
a great innovator. His drawings at this time were academic,
of a cold and scholarly perfection, with a precise and
meticulous rendering of anatomy. Here was no indication
of those sublime ' hesitations ', those subtle ' anomalies ',
which less than twenty years later were to become an
unmistakable mark of Cezanne's art. Yet he already had
within him that gift of persistence, through all doubts and
anxieties, which none of his biographers have failed to point
out. Zola was the first to remark on these aspects of
Cezanne's character, when in a letter addressed to Baille
he asked him to overlook Cezanne' s moodiness, his sudden
angers and equally sudden depressions: 'Even when you
are hurt, you should not be angry with him, but with the
evil demon which overcasts his mind. His is a heart of
gold, he is a friend who can understand us, mad like us
and a dreamer as we are.' ·
This letter was written in May 1860 from Paris, where
Zola had been living since February 1858. The last thing
he and Cezanne had done together before his departure
was to paint a screen with decorative patterns and orna-
mental trees. Their separation increased Cezanne's natural
unrest: 'Ever since you left,' he wrote, 'I am tormented
by grief. This is the truth. You would not recognize me.
I feel heavy, stupid and slow.' The year when his father
bought the Jas de Bouffan, 1859, was also the year of
Cezanne's baccalauteat. The decision to devote himself
entirely to painting and to leave with Baille to join Zola
in Paris became more and more firmlv rooted at the con-
clusion of his high-school studies, but his father saw matters
in a different light. With solid common sense he wrote to
his son: 'Think of the future: with genius you die, with
money you eat.' But Paul had the support of his mother
and sister Marie. To please his father he began to study
law, but continued at the same time to plan his journey
to the capital. From Paris, Zola sent him a time-table for
5
each day: 'From six till eleven in the morning, you will
go to a studio and paint from the nude; then eat; then
from twelve to four you. will copy old masters in the Louvre
and Luxembourg. This will make nine hours' work.' At
last, Paul's father gave in. But between the first decision
to leave and the actual departure came one of Cezanne's
frequent periods of discouragement. He felt trapped in a
kind of apathy, born of lack of confidence. He did not
react even to Zola's hortatory and encouraging letters: 'If
you remain silent, how do you expect to go forward and
achieve anything? It is materially impossible. And remember
it's not the man who shouts loudest who is right. Speak,
if you like, wisely and gently; but by the horns, by the
feet, by the tail and navel of the devil, speak! ' Slowly
and gradually, Cezanne's courage returned and towards the
end of April 1861 Louis-Auguste himself accompanied his
son to Paris.
No sooner did Paul arrive than he set to work enthusiasti-
cally; in fact, he could hardly find the time to be together
with Zola. He attended the Academie Suisse, where he met
and became a friend of Guillaumin and Pissarro. But most
of his time was spent in the Louvre. Cezanne did not feel
happy in Paris, with its bustle and confusion. The works
of the great masters (Delacroix and Courbet as well as
Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Velazquez and Rubens) moved him
profoundly, but Paris itself was strange to him, as was the
artistic life of the capital. However, he benefited greatly
from this first visit. This was the year when the students
rose in revolt against the Academy and asked Courbet if
he would himself set up a free school of art. As we know,
Courbet answered in a famous letter: 'It is the duty of
the human spirit to work always on the new, always in
the present, starting from acquired results. One should
never begin anew, but proceed from synthesis to synthesis,
from conclusion to conclusion. Real artists are those who
take up an epoch just at the point to which it has been
brought by the preceding periods. Going back is the same
as doing nothing, it is a pure waste of time . . . Beauty
is in nature and is met in reality under the most varied
forms. As soon as it has been discovered there, beauty
belongs to art, or rather to the artist who knows how to
6
see it . . . Beauty, like truth, is linked to the time in
which one lives and to the individual who is capable of
perceiving it.' These ideas were in the air, and were imbuing
new life into the stale academic tradition. How then could
Cezanne fail to be stirred by these exciting new currents?
However, by the end of the year, he was back at Aix:
between the desire to act, to succeed, to achieve his
ambition as an artist, and his inability to adapt to a new
environment and way of life, it was the latter which
prevailed.
So he began to work in his father's bank, a resentful and
sullen employee. But with each day that passed his urge
to return to painting grew stronger. The point came when
he could no longer bear to be confined within the walls
of J:he office. It was then that he wrote in an account
book the famous couplet:

Cezanne, le banquier, ne voit pas sans fremir

a
Derriere son comptoir naitre un peintre venir.
'Cezanne the banker sees not without trembling
Behind his counter a future painter being born.'

In November 1862 Cezanne was back in Paris, and he

remained there until July 1864. When it was clear that
there was absolutely no chance that his decision to become
a painter would be reversed, his father said that he should.
at least set about his career seriously, and sit for the entrance
examinations of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He did so, but
did not pass. His drawings were no longer academic; his
hand moved more freely, and an unusual depth of emotion
was already present, although still in an uncertain and
confused form. What is undeniable, however, is that what
Cezanne was now .doing, or trying to do, could scarcely
be pleasing to the professors of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
Cezanne himself was not really very concerned about what
they might think. He was moving towards a highly romantic
kind of painting, in which his sympathies for Delacroix,
Daumier and Courbet were apparent. But in Paris he was
also enlarging the circle of his acquaintances through his
renewed friendship with Guillaumin and Pissarro: this
brought him into contact with Bazille, Monet, Sisley and
7
Renoir. In 1863 in company with Zola he visited the Salon
des Refuses, where Manet was showing Luncheon on the
Grass, the masterpiece whose boldness and originality were
found so shocking by the public. He did not meet Manet
himself, however, until 1866. Luncheon _on the Grass
exercised a special fascination upon Cezap.ne, and he con-
sidered that the painting advanced and developed the lesson
of Courbet in a bolder, fresher and more spontaneous
technique. These impressions were all stored up by him,
even though, as was always the case, the fruit of his
discoveries did not appear until after a long process of
maturation.
Cezanne's doubts and periods of unrest were by no means
over. In 1864 when he returned to Aix, he was again in
a distressed and irritable state. He realised by this time
that he needed both Paris and Provence, so in the years
1864-70 he divided his time between the capital and his
native countryside.
In 1866 he sent two works to the Salon, as he had done
two years before. On the first occasion he did not complain
when he was rejected, but this time he protested in a
letter to Count Nieuwerkerke, the Director of the Beaux-
Arts: ' I cannot accept the unlawful judgment of colleagues
whom I have not authorized to judge me. I am therefore
writing to you for your support. I wish to appeal to the
public and have my work shown in spite of everything ...
Let the Salon des Refuses be re-established; even if I
were to be the only one there, I ardently hope the public
will know that I do not care to be confused with the
gentlemen of the Jury, as they themselves do not wish
to have anything to do with me.' This letter expressed
an opinion which was shared by many other artists, but
Count Nieuwerkerke was certainly not the right person
to take up the cudgels on behalf of artists who were
innovators. What the Count thought about artists with
realist tendencies or whose subject-matter had any con-
nection with the ' present ' had already been expressed by
him a few years earlier with regard to Millet and Courbet:
'It is the painting of democrats, people who do not change
their shirts and want to get the upper hand over decent
society; it is an art I do not like; in fact, it disgusts me. '
8
To make up for this, Cezanne had the consolation of
Manet's admiration for his still-lifes. Another source of
consolation had been an article by Marius Roux, which had
appeared in the local paper Memorial d' Aix in December
1865 on the occasion of the publication of Zola's La Con-
fession de Claude, which the author dedicated to his faithful
friends Baille and Cezanne. This was the first time mention
of Cezanne had been made in the press: ' Cezanne ', wrote
Roux, 'has left amohg us the impression of an intrepid
worker and a conscientious pupil. I am waiting for his
work to be recognized and on that day I will not be the
only one to talk about him. He belongs to a school which
has the privilege of provoking criticism. ' Meanwhile, as
well as the still-lifes, Cezanne was painting a series of
portraits: the Negro Scipion (pl. 5), his uncle Dominique,
the art critic Valabregue, the painter Emperaire (pl. 4) and
his father reading the paper L'Avenement in which Zola's
' pieces ' in support of Manet had appeared.
At this time grave events were about to take place in
France. The Franco-Prussian War broke out in July; this
led to the fall of Napoleon III, the proclamation of the
Third Republic, the armistice of January 1871, and then the
insurrection which set up in the capital the first people's
government in modern history, the Commune. When on
5 April Courbet made his appeal to the artists of Paris,
which was surrounded by Prussian soldiers, the great amphi-
theatre of the Faculty of Medicine was filled to overflowing
with painters and sculptors, and the names of the members
who were elected to the Committee of the Artists' Fede-
ration included those of the greatest French artists of the
time: Corot, Courbet, Daumier, Manet. The support given
by the artist-craftsmen to the Commune was so prompt
and effective that their forces alone made up an entire
company of combatants. Soon afterwards, in a week of
repression, 'the week of blood', as it was called, the troops
of Thiers put down all popular resistance. Courbet was
arrested, tried and exiled.
All these events seem to have left Cezanne unmoved, for
all his thoughts and attention centred upon his work, now
daily becoming more masterly and individual. During the
war he took refuge at L'Estaque, near Marseilles. He took
9
with him. Hortense Fiquet, the young model he had met
in Paris in 1869. Their son was born in 1872, and they
were married in 1886. This was a fruitful time for Cezanne,
the beginning of the great period of his art. We need
only mention some of the works · produced then to
appreciate this: The Black Clock (pl. 8), View of L'Estaque,
Street in Pontoise, 1872, House and Tree, Old Path at
Auvers, The house of Dr Gachet at Auvers, 1873 (pl. 16).
As the last two titles indicate, Cezanne had moved from
L'Estaque to Auvers, and was staying in the house of that
same doctor, an amateur painter and friend of artists, who
seventeen years later was to give shelter to Van Gogh,
exactly one year before the artisfs death. At Auvers Ce-
zanne also painted The Suicide's House (pl. 13), one of
his first masterpieces. This work affirmed his position in
the impressionist movement. The group of new painters
joined together in 1874 for their first exhibition. Present
were: Sisley, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, Monet, Berthe Mo-
risot, Guillaumin, and several lesser-known artists. Monet
showed the famous painting which gave its name to the
whole movement: Impression, rising sun. Cezanne exhibited
The Suicide's House and also a painting quite opposite in
inspiration: A modern Olympia (pl. 15). This work was
based on Manet's famous painting and was still romantic
in style, though the colours had become more luminous
and bright. Manet himself did not exhibit, perhaps thinking
he could still aspire to official acclaim. The main purpose
of the exhibition, which was organized at the Galerie N°adar
in the Boulevard des Capucines, was to oppose the tyranny
of the Salon. It therefore had a definite bias towards
expressions of revolt against the traditional artistic struc-
tures. It also, of course, aimed to affirm the values of a
new vision of art.
Public and critics alike received the exhibition with a
chorus of protest and scorn. Cezanne's works received the
worst treatment. It was probably partly because of the
treatment he received at his time that he was later always
reluctant to send in to exhibitions. Of the eight exhibitions
of impressionist paintings which took place from 1876 to
1886 Cezanne took part in only one. This was the third
exhibition, in 1877, where he showed seventeen canvases,
10
painted at L'Estaque, Pontoise and Auvers. Their reception
was no different, however: the same malevolence on the
part of the public, the same hostility from the critics. Yet
Cezanne's work was proceeding with ever greater purpose
and conviction; true, his doubts did not leave him, but
by his impassioned and obdurate persistence he succeeded
in overcoming them.
In those years he painted, among others, such works as
The Hermitage at Pontoise, The Sideboard, Madame Ce-
zanne in a Red Armchair, The Pond at Jas de Bouff an and
Portrait of Chocquet. Some of these paintings already show
signs of a trend towards a more structural form of
impressionism. Around 1878 there thus began what has
been called Cezanne's period of constructive analysis. Typical
wol'ks of the period are L'Estaque, seen over the Bay o.f
Marseilles, Winding street, Tablecloth and Fruit Dish,
House by Mont Sainte-Victoire, Still-life with apples
(pls 24-5). Cezanne was in Paris at this time, and met
Huysmans at Zola's house. In 1882 he was at last accepted
by the Salon, for in spite of rejections he had been sending
in regularly, and never failed to do so, · if for no other
reason than to show his father that he was a serious painter,
a 'professional'. His acceptance this time, however, was on
the grounds that he was a ' pupil of Guillemet ', and this
was the first and last time that he was ever accepted by the
Salon.
In the years which followed, Cezanne strove for an ever
greater definition of the constituent elements of the image,
and around 1890 this became the so-called 'syntheticism'
of Cezanne. He stayed in Paris, Medan, Pontoise, Aix,
L'Estaque and Gardanne, always immersed in his painting
to the exclusion of all else. He was seen with Zola, with
Pissario, Renoir and Monet, and also met Monticelli: On
his father's death in 1886 he inherited a solid fortune. But
grief at his father's death was accompanied by another
cruel blow. This came to him from the dear friend of his
youth, and it caused Cezanne a sorrow which could never
be healed. Although he spoke of it to no one, it could be
seen that the grief was bitter and irremediable. For it
was in this year that Zola published L'Oeuvre, his novel
of the life of a painter, Claude Lantier. The character of
11
Lantier had more than one point of resemblance with
Cezanne, although in certain other facets it resembled
Manet. While he realized that Zola had created a literary
character in which the imagination of the author played
a large part, Cezanne recognized himself substantially in
this portrait, and Zola's judgment wounded him bitterly.
Lantier was a painter who hanged himself from a beam
in his studio in front of the work which he was impotent
to complete. The tone of Zola's story is tragic, and there is
never any hint of disparagement. But perhaps it was partly
because of the sincere compassion expressed in the novel
that Cezanne's grief was so inconsolable.
Zola had in fact moved away from his impressionist friends
and had ended by no longer believing in them, after having
been their most valiant champion and defender. L'Oeuvre
was only a milder statement of the view he was to express
a few years later, when he explicitly stated his regret at
having fought con behalf of those spots, those reflections,
that breaking-up of light ' in which, he said, the strength
of the impressionists' original emotion in the face of nature
had become exhausted. On 4 April of that year, Cezanne
wrote the following letter to Zola: c I have just received
L'Oeuvre which you were good enough to send me. I
thank the author of the Rougon Macquart novels for this
gesture of affection and ask him to let me clasp his hand,
in remembrance of the past. With all the enthusiasm of
the old times, your Cezanne.' This then, c the past', c the
old times ', was all that remained of their friendship; as
far as the present was concerned, after L'Oeuvre, their
friendship was over for good. No more letters passed
between them, there were no more greetings and they did
not meet again.
c Isolation, that's what I deserve', so Cezanne confessed
to Claude Bernard, the young painter and writer who was
a friend of Van Gogh. But though he clung to this choice,
and his irritability increased still more as a result of
diabetes, he was becoming the centre of a group of admirers,
young artists and writers: Gustave Geffroy, Joachim Ga-
squet, Maurice Denis. In 1901, Denis exhibited at the
Salon of the Societe nationale des Beaux-Arts a large canvas
entitled Homage to Cezanne. A still-life by the solitary
12
of Aix appeared in the centre, and a group of artists were
arranged around it: Odilon Redon, Vuillard, Serusier, Bon-
nard, and Denis himself. Among the artists, however, a
new figure now made his appearance. This was Ambroise
Vollard, the most active and enlightened dealer in modern
art between the years 1890 and 1910. It was Vollard who
took an active interest in Cezanne's work and organized
his first large exhibition in 1895. Although once again this
exhibition did not persuade the public to accept Cezanne,
yet it did bring him some esteem among certain avant-g,arde
collectors and a wider circle of art-lovers. His painting had
now reached the furthest stage in its development. After
a journey to Switzerland in 1891, he spent some time at
Fontainebleau. The year 1892 had produced some out-
standing successes in his painting. The process of structural
synthesis to which all his efforts were tending in that year
attained what was possibly its highest culmination in the
five versions of The Card Players (pls 50-1). In the year
before the Vollard exhibition he had spent some time at
Giverny, where Monet too was staying. Through him Ce·
zanne became acquainted with Georges Clemenceau, Octave
Mirbeau and Geffroy.
But as a result of one of the fits of temper which were
becoming more and more frequent, Cezanne set off again
suddenly from Giverny for Aix, leaving all his paintings
at the hotel: it was Monet who had them crated and sent
to him. 'Here I am buried again in the South - which
I should never have left - about to rush off in pursuit
of the chimera of art. ' Thus he wrote to Monet from his
refuge at Aix. He found his mother in ill-health. Cezanne
was sincerely devoted to his mother and for the three
years remaining to her he surrounded her with every care
and attention, dividing his time between painting and his
mother's bedside. When she died, in October 1898, he had
to agree for legal reasons connected with her estate to
sell the Jas de Bouffan. To his grief at the death of his
mother there was therefore added the further loss of the
places and the house where he had spent so much of his
life. He then moved into a house in the Rue Bculegon "in
Aix; he had alreapy found a cottage above the Aix dam
where he could paint, even sleep at times, and keep his
13
canvases. He liked this place and would gladly have bought
it, but the owner was not willing to sell.
In 1899 Cezanne sent three works to the Salon des Inde-
pendants, an organization founded in 1884 so that artists
could make their works known without having to submit
them to a jury. He showed there again three years later.
He was persuaded to exhibit his works by his new young
friends, who considered him a master. But surprising things
were happening: the Nationalgalerie in Berlin bought one
of his landscapes, and the name Cezanne crossed a frontier.
This seems, at least in part, to have compensated Cezanne
for his many disappointments. He now bought some land
on the road to Lauves, north of Aix, and had a spacious
studio built there. His tenacious passion for work continued
to sustain and at the same time torment him.
In spite of the break in their friendship, when Zola died
in 1902 Cezanne felt great sorrow. But it was Zola's death
which, almost. by chance, showed how Cezanne's fame had
now grown. When Zola's collection was put up for sale
in March of the following year, ten youthful works by
Cezanne fetched a far higher price than the work of the
other impressionists, as much as 3,000 or 4,000 francs as
compared with 2,000 for a Monet and 900 or 500 for a
Pissarro. This was the preparation for the triumph of the
Salon d' Automne, a newly-founded association in which
the artist members themselves acted as jury. Cezanne was
given a room to himself, and was acclaimed at long last.
Jules Renard wrote in his diary on 21 October 1904: "At
the Salon d' Automne . . . Cezanne, the barbarian. Many
famous daubs have had to be admired before liking this
carpenter of colour '. His long struggle and fidelity to art
were at last rewarded. In the following year he sent another
nine works to the Salon d' Automne and in the same
year also exhibited in the Salon des Independants. His
former diffidence seems to have left him. Meanwhile he did
not cease working intensively. After seven years of studies,
sketches and experiments he completed The Great Bathers,
now in Philadelphia (pls 70-1 ).
On 15 October 1906, Cezanne was painting outside when a
heavy storm blew up and he caught cold. Yet he continued
to think about his unfinished paintings, and two days later
14
he wrote a stiff note to his paint-dealer: 'Eight days ago
I ordered from you ten tubes of burnt lake no; 7. I have
not yet heard from you. What has happened? Answer me,
and quickly, please. ' On 20 October, his sister Marie
summed up the situation dramatically in· a letter to Paul,
the artist's son, who was in Paris with his mother: ' Your
father caught a chill on Monday ... He stayed out a few
hours in the rain, they brought him home .on a laundry
cart and two men had to put him to bed. The next morning
he went out to the garden early to work on a portrait of
Vallier, under the lime-tree: he came away dying.' Cezanne
died on 22 October; his wife and son rushed to Aix but
were too late to see him alive. He was sixty-seven. On the
first anniversary of his death, the artists of the Salon
d' A11tomne put on a retrospective exhibition of fifty-five
of his canvases and a large number of watercolours.
Thus began the posthumous fame of Cezanne. In a survey by
the Mercure de France in 1905, the question was asked:
'What do you think of Cezanne? ' Paul Serusier replied:
'If a tradition is born out of our epoch - and I dare to
hope that it will be - it is from Cezanne that it will be
born. ' With the 1907 exhibition in the Salon d' Automne
the 'tradition' of Cezanne was a reality.

Works
The various avant-garde movements of contemporary art
arose out of a confrontation with impressionism. Its basic
concept, freedom, was accepted by them all,. but it seemed
that impressionism had· stopped short at an external and
superficial recording of reality. Rejoicing at the advent of
expressionism, Hermann Bahr wrote in 1916: 'The im-
pressionist is man reduced to a gramophone of the external
world.' But already eight years earlier, when writing of
Braque, Guillaume ·Apollinaire had spoken of impressionism
as ' a period of ignorance and frenzy '. Picasso too, on
visiting an exhibition of impressionist works at about this
time, is said to have looked at the paintings and then
exclaimed: 'Here we can see that it is raining, we can see
the sun is shining, but nowhere can we see painting.' Yet
15
it was just at this time that admiration for Cezanne by the
most advanced artists, especially the cubists, had become an
established and concrete fact. It was about then that Leger
wrote: 'I wonder what present-day painting would have
become without Cezanne. For a long time I have worked
with his painting. I could not succeed in breaking away from
it, or cease exploring and discovering it. Cezanne taught
me the love of forms and volumes and made me concentrate
on drawing. I realized then that his drawing must be rigid
and in no way sentimental.' These words already contain
a statement of many of the reasons why, although Cezanne
belonged to the generation of the impressionists, he was
not included in the negative judgment passed on them by
the new generation of artistic innovators.
The cubists blamed the impressionists for their lack of
rigour and stylistic coherence, and especially for the episodic
character of their painting. It is clear that these reproaches
spring from the situation of opposition and revolt out of
which the avant-garde arose, yet it is also true that the
theories of impressionism easily lent themselves to a criti-
cism of this kind . .Besides, was not Gauguin the first to
begin when he said: 'The impressionists look all round,
with the eye, and not at the centre, with the mind'?
With slow determination, Cezanne had put to himself the
problem of how to overcome .the ' t1eeting ' aspect of im-
pressionism by a painting of solidity and definition. Light,
which in impressionist painting vibrated and darted over
every object, merging into one palpitating brilliance, in
Cezanne was absorbed by objects and itself became forin,
in unison with colour. Cezanne rejected the 'impression' in
favour of a deeper comprehension of reality. At the very
time when all the generally accepted values of the nine-
teenth century were being re-examined, and what had
seemed to be incontrovertible truths were again called in
question, Cezanne strove to construct something firm and
lasting, something which would resist fragmentation. The
broad canvas of history and emotion, against which
Cezanne's gr·'!atly admired Delacroix, Daumier and Courbet
had moved, had now shrunk, as the artist became an ever
more solitary figure. A full awareness of the artist's changed
and difficult condition is shown in Van Gogh's belief that
16
 artists no longer formed part of society, but were ' opposed '
to it, : rejected ' in the same way as society rejected the pros-
titute, 'our friend and sister'. Cezanne certainly did not yet
possess a similar awareness, but neither can his solitude be
explained merely by his difficult temperament. His position
did not, in fact, differ greatly from Van Gogh's, though
whereas liberation of emotion was all-important in Van
Gogh, in Cezanne the emotions were suppressed and con-
stricted within a formal structure.
It was Picasso who saw the profound connection binding
Cezanne and Van Gogh to the same harsh destiny: ' Cezanne
would never have interested me,' he told Zervos,-• if he
had thought and lived like Jacques-Emile Blanche, even if
the apple he painted had been ten times more beautiful.
WQat interests me is the anxiety of Cezanne, the torment
of Van Gogh, that is, the drama of man. The rest is
unimportant. ' Picasso has realized that Cezanne and Van
Gogh are the two faces of the same historical situation.
Cezanne's research into a blocked form was therefore not
undertaken purely for aesthetic reasons, but was also a way
of creating something durable and of reaching some kind
of certainty. The Proven~al landscapes which Cezanne and
Van Gogh painted in the same period provide striking
evidence of the difference between them, and this contrast
is the more apparent as the backgrounds were so very
similar: for Van Gogh, landscape provides a stage upon
which his violent emotions are enacted, so that it too
becomes violent and convulsed; while for Cezanne the
same landscape is a solid reality which he wishes to preserve
in an equally solid form, conceived as the only possible
antidote to his inner unrest.
From this point of view there is really something heroic about
Cezanne's technique, for in him too there lived romantic
impulses, he too felt the power of Delacroix and Daumier,
of El Greco and Tintoretto, but he forced himself to follow
the path of Courbet and Poussin, though without, of course,
rejecting any of the discoveries of impressionism. No one,
I think, has pointed out this 'truth' of Cezanne better than
Jacques Riviere. Writing only four years before his death,
he said, ' Cezanne was not the fumbling artist of genius
a certain legend has tended to show. On the contrary, his
17
watercolours are so amazingly skilful that they are equalled
only by the virtousity of the Japanese; on the white sheet
of paper the whole structure of a landscape is uncovered
by a few touches of colour, which are so exactly right that
they make the intervening spaces speak and yield up their
innermost meaning. Yet Cezanne always holds himself back,
fearing to substitute his own personality for its sincerity;
he imposes on his brush a faithful slowness. Application
dominates him like a passion; he bends his head devotedly,
keeps silent the better to see; imprisons the form he is
copying within the circle of his attention; and, since it
moves, he never breathes easily until he has captured it.
Time and again his brush wishes to abandon itself to its
own volitfon but he holds it back, forces it to remain
1

' ruthless '. So, if we think we can see hesitations in his

painting, these are not the outcome of the impotence of a
hand too heavy or too unskilful to follow precisely the
outline of objects, but are only the scruples of an unremit-
ting patience, intent on moderating the outbursts of his too
eager skill. '
The problem of completed form thus remains the essential
problem of Cezanne, but it is to be interpreted in the light
of the completeness of his aspirations. The ideal of Cezanne
is an ideal of classicism, stated at the outset of a completely
anti-classical period.
While accepting the 'naturalism ' of the impressionists,
Cezanne wished to eliminate its more ephemeral aspects
and restore to painting the restraint and measure of ·the
masters of classicism: ' Imagine Poussin completely done
over again from nature and you will have a classic as I
understand it. ' As he liked to say, Cezanne wanted to make
out of impressionism something ' lasting, like the art of
the museums '. His was not an academic dream, but a
spiritual necessity: 'Everything we see, surely, melts away?
Nature is always the same, but nothing of it endures,
so far as we can see. Our art must give a sense of its
duration, must make us feel that it is eternal. What lies
behind the natural phenomenon? Perhaps nothing; perhaps
everything. Therefore my hands perform their task, taking
from right and left, here and there, everywhere, its colours.
its tones; I fix them, place them side by side, and they
18
 form lines, " become " objects, rocks, trees, without my
thinking about it. They assume volume. My canvas
does not vacillate, it is true, compact, complete. '
Like all the other impressionists, Cezanne inherited from
Courbet a hatred for fantasy and the literary element in art.
A painting, in his view, must live by the strength of paint
alone, must rely only on the means which are proper to
it, without the aid of melodrama or anecdote. For him
as for Courbet, however, this does not mean giving up the
rendering of a sense of the real, by virtue of painting. •My
method,' he said, •is hatred for the fantastic image, it is
realism, but a realism, let it be understood, which is full
of greatness, the heroism of the real. ' This attitude of
Cezanne towards reality is what made so much impressionist
art, appear frivolous in the eyes of the cubists when they
came to compare it with his.
This was no longer, of course, the great period of realism.
The most vigorous ideological positions of the nineteenth
century were losing their foothold and crumbling, but at
his provincial retreat in Provence, Cezanne entrenched him-
self immovably within a single circumscribed problem, that
of form as an absolute totality of representation. From that
position, he resisted, conducted his battle, and at the same
time opened up new directions to modern art, just as Van
Gogh had done in another way. In a recent period when
formal values were praised exclusively, Cezanne has even
been interpreted as a purely abstract painter; but even if
his experimeotation in formal values, taken alone, might
have made such an interpretation possible, the whole of
Cezanne's experience has been of far greater richness and
complexity.
Cezanne's creative process cannot really be reduced either
to a scientific attitude which developed the optical discov-
eries of impressionism to the extent of splitting up objects,
or to a simple plane of abstraction. For Cezanne abstraction
begins after he has gained a deep insight into his subject,
and even at this point it is never a one-sided process.
Cezanne studied nature minutely and wished to learn all
its secrets. •To paint a landscape well, I must first discover
all its geological features. ' This was not meant to be a witty
remark: to testify to the contrary, there are the Sunday
19
 walks Cezanne took with a childhood friend, Professor
Marion, whom he questioned on the physical history of
the earth and the structure of the Aix countryside. When.
therefore, Cezanne speaks of the • truth • of the real world.
he means something precise. He does riot aim to do a
generic landscape painting, but a painting in which ' the per-
fume of the pines, which is sharp in the sun, must be
wedded to the green scent of the meadows, the odour of
the stones, the perfume of the distant marble of the Mont
Sainte-Victoire ... ' This, he continues, is ' what must be
rendered, and only with colours, without literature'.
Colour is the only specific medium of the painter. The artist
has only this medium through which to achieve the miracle
of art. But is colour not also nature's basic way of showing
itself? Once, 'a landscape used to be composed in the
same way as a historical scene, from the outside; it was
not realized that nature is more in depth than on the
surface. One can modify, decorate and dress up the surface,
but one cannot attain depth without attaining truth. Colours
are the expression of this truth at the surface, they rise
up from the roots of the world. ' Then, just as nature
manifests its truth through coloured forms, so too must
the painting, through its coloured forms, manifest the poetic
substance on which it feeds. This is the conception of
Cezanne. As we see, the so-called ' positivistic naturalism '
of the impressionists has moved up on to another plane,
becoming a sort of terrestrial or cosmic immanence where
man is both an integral part and a consciousness. ·
The work of art is thus the outcome of knowledge and
emotion at one and the same time, organized by the artist
into the image. The objectivity of the impressionists, the
essential purpose of which was the pure registration of
impressions, is now abandoned. In Cezanne there is medi-
tation and reflection: • Landscape becomes humanized, is
reflected and thinks in me. ' He is clearly aware of thi~
problem: ' I am the subjective consciousness of this
landscape, and my canvas is its objective consciousness. My
canvas and the landscape are both outside me, but the latter
is chaotic, haphazard, confused, without logical life, without
any kind of rational being, while the former is perma!lent,
categorized, and it participates in the world of ideas. '
20
 The modern problem of the autonomy of art had now been
stated: the painting is a self-contained entity, with laws
which are absolutely its own. On the other hand, this new
reality does not deny its connection with its origins, but
affirms it. This is because for Cezanne creation is never
merely a matter of speculation, as it had already tended
to become in certain works by Seurat. Cezanne wants the
painting to live through the life which is contained in it,
he wants it to be autonomous and to exist only by virtue
of its own qualities, without any admixture of literature,
music, or even science. But at the same time he knows that
the work cannot live unless it has been created by all the
powers of the artist in unison with the powers of the
natural world: 'Every one of my brushstrokes is like a
little of my blood, mixed with a little of my model's blood,
in the sun, the light, in colour. We must live in harmony,
my model, my colours, and I.'
The way of Cezanne is therefore not the way of abstraction.
One might perhaps say that he is an 'organic' painter.
Even colour is not an abstract or metaphorical entity to
him, but a natural energy in its own right: 'Colour, I
would say, is biological, it is alive and it alone can make
things live. ' Outside symbolism, psychology and abstrac-
tion, Cezanne's colour is tpe very life of the objects
which are contained within the rectangle of his canvas.
This is perhaps what constitutes Cezanne's own form of
classicism.
For the painter colour is therefore also form. This is the
meaning of Cezanne's famous equation 'form =colour'.
Linear design in itself must· not exist, for it does not exist
in nature. Line is implicit in the rounded form. The more
colour grows and gains in precision and harmony, the more
the ' line ' of objects will appear, but it must appear through
form. The painting of Cezanne cannot therefore be graphic
or linear, but is a painting of volumes. His urgent need to
' produce form ' resulted in that flat, dry, structural brush-
stroke which is one of the basic elements of his style, and
in the slowness of execution which has become legendary.
He was forced to simplify and condense. In one of his
most frequently-quoted letters, Cezanne summed up his
theory of the simplification of forms in a statement which
21
 was later to serve the cubists so well: ' In nature everything
is modelled according to three basic shapes: the sphere, the
cone, the cylinder. We must learn to paint these shapes,
then we shall be able to do whatever we wish.'
But once these shapes were created, they had to be placed
in relationship to each other, and this posed the problem
of planes, of their inter-relationship and their meeting-
points: the problem, in short, of the architecture of the
painting. So we come to another essential feature of
Cezanne's original treatment of form, and the one, perhaps,
which has had the greatest consequences for modern art:
the beginnings of a new kind of perspective.
Cezanne's attempt to render the three-dimensional quality
of objects in such a way as to give them weight and
substance forced him inexorably to look at objects no longer
from one point of view, but from several. It was only in
this way that he could succeed in showing the planes and
volumes most effectively. Within the framework of a paint-
ing one single object was represented in various perspectives,
being distorted either in a vertical or horizontal direction,
and similarly, the line of the horizon was no longer a
straight horizontal, but became adapted to the architectural
requirements of the painting. Such a way of 'seeing' meant
that an object was viewed from several angles simul-
taneously and arranged on the canvas in a new way, thus
creating proportions and relationships differing from those
of the Renaissance tradition. In this connection, a number
of interesting observations were made by Maurice Merle~u­
Ponty in an essay on Cezanne: 'Through its fidelity to
natural phenomena, Cezanne's research into perspective laid
bare all that recent psychology was later to formulate. The
kind of perspective experienced by us, that of our per-
ception, is not a geometric or photographic perspective: ·in
our own perception, nearby objects seem to be smaller, and
far-off objects larger, than they appear on a photograph ...
To say that a circle seen obliquely is seen as an ellipse is
to substitute for effective perception the view of what we
should see if we were cameras: what we actually see is a
form which oscillates around the ellipse without being an
ellipse. In a portrait of Madame Cezanne, the hem of the
hangings on eitl 1~r side of the figure does not form a straight
22
line; but it is known that if a straight line passes under a
wide strip of paper, the two visible sections appear distorted.
The table of Gustave Geffroy is placed in the lower part
of the painting, but as our eye travels over a wide surface,
it picks up images from different viewpoints, and the total
surface is curved. It is true that by bringing these distortions
to the canvas the artist fixes them and arrests the spon-
taneous movement by which they are amassed one over
the other in perception and tend towards a geometric
perspective ... (but) through the genius of Cezanne, per-
spective distortions cease to be visible in themselves when
the painting is looked at as a whole, and, just as in natural
vision, they only contribute towards a general impression
of an order which is in process of coming into being, an
object appearing and coagulating in front of our eyes. '
Cezanne's distortions were therefore as far from being arbi-
trary as could possibly be-imagined: they were the result,
as he said, of the intervention of a 'logic' within the
impressionist ' optics '. But it is clear that all Cezanne's
achievements in this field came into being and were esta-
blished only as the result of an incessant fatigue and tension,
lasting through to the end of his life. This strain is referred
to in a letter written in September 1906, one month before
his death: •My mind is in such a confused state and I am
so disturbed that I was afraid, at one moment, that my
weak reason would be affected ... Now I believe I am better
and can think more correctly along the line of my studies.
Will I ever attain the end which I have sought and pursued
for so long? I continue to study from nature and appear
to progress slowly '. In order to understand Cezanne's
achievements more fully, one must therefore examine at
least the most significant stages of his long journey.
The first time Cezanne's inner preoccupation becomes ex-
plicit is between the years 1860-70, when he experimented
in various ways. I have indicated which artists specially
influenced him at this time. For example, in a painting such
as Orgy, executed between 1864-8, the influence of Venetian
art, especially the painting of Veronese and Tintoretto, is
apparent - the colour of Veronese, with its intense blues
and reds, and the loose design. of Tintoretto; while in a
work such as The Washing of the Dead Man, painted
23
m 186 7-9, there are hints of Caravaggio in the dramatic fall
of light and shade on the outstretched body of the corpse
and on the two figures intent on their pious task. In
other works, such as The Robbers and the Ass (pls 2-3)
and Melted Snow at L'Estaque, painted in 1869-70, the
dominant influence appears to be Daumier: strong colours,
enclosed within a sombre background, and vigorously de-
fined by dark outlines. Daumier himself had painted the
same subject of The Robbers and the Ass in a well-known
work. In all these works we see that at that time Cezanne's
preferences lay in erotic and tragic themes. When the
subject did not specifically fall into either of these categories,
as in the case of a landscape, then he frequently filled the
sky with dark clouds, and spread over the countryside the
light of an imminent storm. But in general he chose subjects
which were in tune with his romantic and ardent nature,
with his restless and passionate spirit, and although such
subjects were sometimes literary in their nature and origin,
they were always generously lived in the imagination. Some
of the titles illustrate this trend: Sorrow (pl. 1 ), Rape,
The Crime, The Strangled Woman. Cezanne's manner of
painting was also adapted to this kind of subject: an
energetic and rather summary brushstroke, thickly-applied
paint. This was a kind of 'ideal' painting, entirely opposed
to direct painting from nature. But, as I have said, Cezanne's
experiments at this time were many and varied, just as there
were numerous influences acting on him, from Delacroix to
Courbet. In the end it was the realism of Courbet, amended
by contact with Manet, which became the dominant influ-
ence on Cezanne's art.
In certain works, Cezanne already revealed the new di-
rection in which he was moving. Among these works are
those which deal with subjects Manet had also painted,
even to the extent of repeating the same title that Manet
had invented, as in Luncheon on the Grass, for example.
But this new direction was still more obvious in a work
such as Paul Alexis Reading a Manuscript to Zola, com-
pleted about the same date. Here the colour had become
softer and the vision more direct, while the energy of
Cezanne's brushstroke appeared in the unfinished figure of
Zola, painted with a firm and sharply defined touch. The
24
painting which best sums up the experiments of this period
of Cezanne,s research is The Black Clock (pl. 8): in this
work Cezanne's particular inclination for consistency of
form and structural solidity of objects is already taking
shape. His colours, however, are still applied thickly and
with layers of grey an<l dark shadows. A freer use of colour
began to appear in such works as the landscape in Munich
(pls 6-7), which like The Black Clock may be dated about
1870.
But the change in Cezanne occurred just between that date
and the first impressionist exhibition, in 1874. In this
respect, Pissarro,s influence was decisive. He was still
painting works such as A modern Ol)1mpia (pls 14-15) with
literary and romantic overtones, although in an ironic vein,
but .in the same year, 1872, and the following year, he
painted House and Tree and The Suicide's House (pl. 13),
where a relationship with nature, light and the innermost
'truth of things' outside and beyond any references to
literature, became fixed and permanent. His palette changed,
and he adopted the bright colour Pissarro urged, the colour
of impressionism. However, he was still hesistant over
the problem of using colour in divided or superimposed
tones, and did not solve this until the years 1874-5. Even
at this time, however, the most important works always
reveal a difference between colour as used by Cezanne and
by the other impressionists, and this difference is easy to
detect. It was at this time that Cezanne began to stress the
geometric shapes in landscape - something which hardly
interested the impressionists at all. If a landscape contained
roofs, then he instinctively accentuated their square,
rectangular or rhomboid shapes by the use of vibrant but
toning colours, with separate blues and reds (pl. 17). And
this difference can also be observed in the brushstroke:
from then on it no longer moved with sharp and rapid
touches, but already tended to follow the structure of
objects, in a vertical or horizontal movement: it was a
more 'applied, brushstroke than before.
But the difference between Cezanne and the other im-
pressionists can be seen even more clearly in the still-lifes
and portraits, for example in the portrait of Madame Ce-
zanne in a red armchair, probably painted at the end of
25
 1877. If we note specially the face, the jacket and the skirt,
we can immediately see the 'method' which Cezanne was
working out: in this painting colour was already present
in the form of blocks, areas and strips, and was used for
the purpose of modelling and shaping the forms. This
produced a disciplined yet spacious composition in which
every previous excess of temperament was held in check.
Monet used to say: 'I should like to paint as a bird sings.'
Nothing could be farther from Cezanne at this stage than
this profession of spontaneity. For he was now abandoning
the ideal of the 'impression' for one of 'sensation', that
is, for an impression of a kind which is durable, not fleet-
ing; for a total sensation, in which sense perceptions become
one with the virtues of consciousness and mind.
It was this concept, which became strengthened and com-
pletely defined around 1878, which led Cezanne into an
area of research that was his alone. A more and more intent
and patient study of nature characterized these years, when
he put his method to the test of fire and proved its
validity. In a way one could say that this was Cezanne's
'programmatic' period: when he analysed objects, arranged
them in simplified compositions and emphasized their vol-
umes. This period extended at least to the end of 1882.
From this date until about 1887, his painting acquired a
broader and more ample dimension.
This was the period of the great views of L'Estaque, the
Bay of Marseilles, and the first paintings of Mont Sainte-
Victoire. When figures were included, however, he did not
renounce their stability and monumentality but tended to
immerse them in a softer or more atmospheric ambience;
this trend continued from the early Two Bathers (pl. 36)
and Three Bathers of 1882 to the Great Bather of 1887.
It seems that at about this date Cezanne wanted to bring
together the conclusions of the various earlier phases, and
move in the direction of a vigorous synthesis of all the
modelled elements. From more than one point of view, this
seems to be the most typical of all Cezanne's works. For
now, in a number of prodigious masterpieces, the problems
of the 'construction' of the image had become perfectly
fused with the impressionists' concern with ' natural truth ':
light, colour and form became vital and took on solidity
26
through an inner cohesion in which all distinctions or
priorities were finally abolished. At the summit of this pro-
cess are the version of The Card Players (pls 50-1 ). The
French tradition of earthy, peasant painting, from the Le
Nain brothers to Courbet, was taken up again in these works
with a vigour and purity without compare: the solemnity
of the card players strikes no attitudes, but is identified
with the basic quality of the gestures, the feeling of man's
duration and of his remote roots.
Included in this period of synthesis, which is therefore a
synthesis of form and vision together, are such works as:
Woman with coffee pot, 1890-4 (pl. 52), Boy in a red
waistcoat, 1890-5 (pl. 58), Smoker leaning on his elbow,
1895-1900, a group of still-lifes, and a series of landscapes
which are both airy and solid. But once again these amazing
achievements did not mark the end of Cezanne's develop-
ment. It must also be understood, of course, that his periods
of trial and experimentation followed a less rectilinear pat-
tern than might be supposed from the account which is
given here in broad outline; indeed, the •comings and
goings' of Cezanne within the course of his development
are far more numerous than could appear from a critical
description, however accurate. Nevertheless, it is a fact that
in this development certain salient moments emerge, and it
is these which are given prominence in these pages. Among
these salient moments must certainly be included the period _
comprising the last years of his life, from 1900-6. These
were the years dominated by the themes of the Bathers and
Mont Sainte-Victoire. An awareness of nature seized him
with a poignancy which he had never known before in such
sweet and disturbing violence. This was Cezanne's 'grand
finale', a lyrical period, with tender skies and soft light,
blues and greens, air and fragrance, and a nostalgia for
nature as a haven of purity and enchantment. Cezanne's
•constructivism' had not disappeared, but now seemed to
act on impulse. The painting, The Great Bathers, in Philadel-
phia Museum, completed in 1905 (pls 70-1) may be consid-
ered the culmination of this last period of Cezanne's activity.
What he had visualized as 'classicism', as the eternal ele-
ment in sensation and at the same time as a ' natural truth ',
is found here palpitating with life. Cezanne had achieved
27
 the impossibk~: a form of painting which is 'classical' with-
out classicism, 'romantic' without romanticism, 'impres-
sionistic' without impressionism.
It is difficult to provide a definition which really touches
the substance of Cezanne's art. Serusier has written: 'One
says about an apple which is painted by an insensitive
artist: "I could eat it". Of an apple by Cezanne, one says:
" It is beautiful! " No one would dare to peel it, it is
more likely that one would feel like copying it. This is
where Cezanne's spirituality lies. And I avoided the word
"idealism" deliberately, because the ideal apple is one which
whets the appetite, while Cezanne's apple speaks to the
spirit through the eyes. ' It is perhaps in this judgment that
we may find the beginnings of a real understanding of Ce-
zanne: an understanding, that is, of an art wherein the
impressions gained by an immediate contact with nature -
impressions neither impaired nor falsified by extraneous
elements - join indissolubly with the consciousness of the
spirit. Is Cezanne's painting, therefore, the result of an
' awareness of the world of sensation ', at a moment when
every other accepted truth appeared to have become a
matter for doubt? Many have sought to show that this is
so. The untouched quality of the world and characters of
Cezanne thus becomes part of the broader concept of nine-
teenth-century philosophy, which sought escape in a return
to the purity and innocence of primordial nature. This
tendency can be traced in the work of many artists, from
Gauguin to the expressionists. But in Cezanne there is
something which goes beyond escapist theories, for Ce-
zanne is the artist who laid the foundations for a new
certitude in modern art. That is why Cezanne, together with
Van Gogh, has been such an invigorating force in contem-
porary art, even though his work has not always been com-
pletely understood. One could say more - his has probably
been the most active and invigorating of the influences
which have determined the course of the art of the twentieth
century.

28
Cezanne and the Critics
Appreciation of Cezanne, as we can see from what has been
said above, came slowly and grudgingly. After Zola broke
away from him and began to reject his ideas, the first
favourable comment on Cezanne's painting is found in the
words and writings of younger artists, neo-impressionists
and symbolists, and in newspaper articles by one or two
especially far-sighted critics. It was not until about 1920
that he gained wider acclaim, when many books were writ-
ten about him, leading to the standard work by Lionello
Venturi, Cezanne, son art, son reuvre, 2 volumes, Paris
1936. This is a catalogue which describes 1634 works in
chronological order. The present book has been based on
this study, apart from a few questions of chronology: all
that remains to be said is that the dates are nearly always
approximate, because· with few exceptions Cezanne did not
date or sign his paintings.
To assist the reader, the essential bibliography is divided
into three sections:

REMINISCENCES AND LETTERS

Zola, La confession de Claude, Paris 1866; Correspondance,

edited by J. Rewald, Paris 1937; E. Bernard, 'Souvenirs
sur P. Cezanne', in Mercure de France, Paris October 1907;
A. Vollard, P. Cezanne, Paris 1914; M. Lafargue, •Souvenirs
sur P. Cezanne', in L'Amour de l'Art, Paris January 1921;
C. Camoin, 'Souvenirs sur P. Cezanne', in L'Amour de
l'Art, January 1921; E. Bernard, Souvenirs sur P. Cezanne,
Paris 1921; L. Larguier, Le dimanche avec P. Cezanne, Pa-
ris 1925; C. Pissarro, Lettres a son fils Lucien, Paris 1950.

MONOGRAPHS AND SPECIAL STUDIES

E. Bernard,• P. Cezanne', Les Hammes d'au;ourd'hui, VIII,

Paris 1892; A. Soffici, P. Cezanne, Florence 1908, reprinted
in Scoperte e massacri, Florence 1919; J. Riviere, Cezanne,
Paris 1910; E. Faure, P. Cezanne, Paris 1910; M. Denis,
29
Theorie, Paris 1912; 0. Mirbeau, Th. Duret, J. Werth, F.
Jourdain, Cezanne, Paris 1914; G. Coquiot, P. Cezanne,
1919; C. Carra, 'P. Cezanne', in Pittura metafisica, Flor-
ence 1919; G. Riviere, Le maitre P. Cezanne, Paris 1923;
T. Klingsor, Cezanne, Paris 1923; A. Salmon, Cezanne,
Paris 1927; R. Fry, Cezanne, a study of his development,
London 1927; E. d'Ors, Gzanne, Paris 1930; G. Mack, P.
Cezanne, New York 1935; M. Rayna!, Cezanne, Paris 1936;
J. Rewald, Gzanne et Zola, Paris 1936; J. Rewald, P. Ce-
zanne, sa vie, son reuvre, son amitie pour Zola, Paris 1939:
L. Venturi, P. Cezanne, aquarelles, London 1943; R. M.
Rilke, Lettres sur Cezanne, Paris 1944; M. Merleau-Ponty,
'Le doute de Cezanne', in Fontaine, Paris 1945, No. 47;
G. Schildt, Le comportement psychologique de Cezanne, in-
terpretation de son art et de sa personnalite, Stockholm
1946; J. Rewald, The History of Impressionism, 1946; E.
Loran, Cezanne's composition, analysis of his form with
diagrams and photographs of his motifs, Los Angeles 1947;
B. Dorival, Cezanne, Paris 1948; A. Lhote, Cezanne, Lau-
sanne 1949; F. Jourdain, Cezanne, Paris 1950; L. Guerry,
Cezanne et !'expression de l'espace, Paris 1950; G. Mar-
chiori, 'Cezanne', in Pittura moderna in Europa, Venice
1950; l Rewald, ' P. Cezanne', Carnets de dessins, Paris
1951; G. Schmidt, Aquarelles de P. Cezanne, Basle 1952;
L. Venturi, 'Cezanne', in Enciclopedia Universale dell' Arte,
Florence 1958, Vol. III; M. Schapiro, Cezanne, New York
1952; Th. Rousseau, Cezanne, Paris 1954; H. Perruchot,
La vie de Cezanne, Paris 1956; L. Brion-Guerry, Cezanne
et !'expression .de l'espace, Paris 1966.

ARTICLES

G. Riviere, 'L'exposition des impressionnistes ', in L'Im-

pressionniste, Paris 14 April 1877; J. K. Huysmans, 'Trois
peintres, Cezanne, Tisson, Wagner', in La Cravache, Paris
4 August 1888 (reprinted in Certains, Paris 1889); G.
Geffroy, 'P. Cezanne', in Le Journal, Paris 25 March 1894;
T. Natanson, 'P. Cezanne', in Revue Blanche, Paris 1 De-
cember 1895; A. Fontaines, 'P. Cezanne', in Mercure de
France, Paris June 1898; F. Fagus, 'Quarante tableaux de
Cezanne ', in Revue Blanche, Paris 15 December 1899; G.
30
 Lecomte, 'P. Cezanne', in Revue d'Art, Paris 9 December
1899; E. Bernard, 'P. Cezanne', in L'Occident, Paris July
1904; M. Denis, 'Cezanne', in L'Ermitage, Paris 15 No-
vember 1905; Ch. Morice, ' Cezanne ' in Mercure de France,
Paris 15 February 1907; R. Riviere and J. F. Schnerb,
'L'atelier de Cezanne', in La Grande Revue, Paris 25 De-
cember 1907; A. Alexandre, ' L'CEuvre de Cezanne ', in Co-
moedia, 15 January 1910; M. Denis, 'Cezanne', in Burling-
ton Magazine, London, January-February 1911; E. Faure,
'P. Cezanne', in L'Art Decoratif, Paris 5 October 1911;
A. Gleizes, ' La tradition et le cuhisme ', in Montjoie!, Pa-
ris February 1913; E. Bernard, 'La methode de P. Ce-
zanne', in Mercure de France, Paris 1920; A. Lhote, 'L'en-
seignement de Cezanne', in N.R.F., Paris November 1920;
G. Severini, 'Cezanne et le cezannisme ',in Esprit Nouveau,
Paris November-December 1921; M. ]. Friedlander, 'Ober
P. Cezanne', in Die Kunst, February 1922; M. Denis, 'Le
dessin de Cezanne', in L'Amour de l'Art, Paris February
1924; G. Riviere, 'La Formation de Cezanne', in L'Amour
de l'Art, 1 August 1925; R. Fry, 'Le developpement de
Cezanne' in L'Amour de l'Art, December 1926; L. Venturi,
' Sur les dernieres annees de Cezanne ', in Minotaure, Paris
1936, No. 9; ]. Rewald, 'A propos du catalogue raisonne
de I'reuvre de Cezanne et de la chronologie de cette reuvre ',
in La Renaissance, Paris March-April 19 37; G. Bazin, ' Ce-
zanne et la Montagne Sainte-Victoire ',in L'Amour de l'Art,
Paris June 1938; J. Rewald, 'P. Cezanne, new documents
on the years 1870-1871 ', in Burlington Magazine, London
April 1939; K. Badt, 'Cezanne and his technique' in Bur-
lington Magazine, London October 1943; J. Bouchot-Saupi-
que, 'Un carnet de croquis de Cezanne', La Revue des Arts,
Paris 1951. A thorough study, containing a vast amount of
material in the form of articles and notes and edited by J.
Letheve, is Impressionnistes et Symbolistes devant la Presse,
Paris 1959.

~I
Notes on the plates
1 Sorrow (or The Magdalen), 1864-8. Oil on canvas, 165 x 124
cm. Paris, Louvre. A typical romantic painting. It was originally
part of a larger composition, Christ in Limbo, taken from an
engraving by Charles Blanc, who in his turn was inspired by a
work in the Prado attributed to Sebastiano del Piombo. It is the
right-hand section.
2-3 The Robbers and the Ass, 1869-70. Oil on canvas, 41 x55
cm. Milan, Grassi Collection, in the Galleria d'Arte Moderna. The
subject is taken from Apuleius, but Cezanne was probably inspired
to paint this work by the picture with the same title by Daumier:
the general colour tones and the way of treating the figures have
more than one point in common with Daumier's painting. Decamps
too had previously painted the same subject.
4 Portrait of Achille Emperalre, 1867-8. Oil on canvas, 200X 122
cm. Signed at bottom right. Paris, private collection. Cezanne's
friend, the painter Emperaire, is depicted here in dramatic form.
Among Cezanne's experiments in romantic painting, this work is
already a sound achievement.
5 The Negro Sciplon, 1868. Oil on canvas, 107X83 cm. Sao Paulo
(Brazil), Museu de Arte. This is perhaps the most important of the
paintings of the romantic period. Cezanne's emotionalism is restrained
here and subordinated to the objective depiction of character. The
sitter is a popular model from the Academie Suisse. The influence
of Ribera may be seen in this work.
6-7 Mont Sainte-Vlctolre, 1870. Oil on canvas, BOX 129 cm. Mu-
nich, Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen. A severe and br9adly-
conceived landscape representing a place near the Jas de Bouffan.
A sketch made from the identical viewpoint is in existence. There
are indications in this work of the course Cezanne's future develop-
ment would take: no longer in the romantic tradition, but moving
towards realism, and hence impressionism.
8 The Black Clock, 1869-71. Oil on canvas, 54X73 cm. Stavros
Niarchos Coll. This still-life foreshadows the values which were
later to become fundamental in the art of Cezanne: a restrained
and structural method of composition, together with a concrete
solidity which imparts :1 kind of solemnity to the most everyday
objects.
9 Black and white still-life, 1871 ·2. Oil on canvas, 63 x 80 cm.
Paris, Jeu de Paume. Much the same as was said of pl. 8 applies
here. This work still shows an emphasis on contrast between the
whites and the blacks, attenuated with touches of lead grey and a
32
yellowish grey, ' studio colours ' which have not become suffused
with impressionist light.
10·11 Still-life with a medallion by Solari, 1870-2. Oil on canvas,
10 X 10 cm. Paris, private collection. Another title for this work is
The Accessories of Cezanne. Philippe Solari was a friend of Cezanne,
a sculptor who made a bust of Cezanne in 1904. The medallion is
a portrait of Dr Gachet.
12 Portrait of Madame Cezanne, 1872-7. Oil on canvas, 55 x46
cm. Pittsburgh, Thompson Collection. Cezanne painted more than
forty portraits of his wife, among them some of his greatest
masterpieces. This is one of the earliest, and is especially noteworthy
for the firm modelling of the face.
13 The Suicide's House, 1872-3. Oil on canvas, 55.5x66.5 cm.
Signed at bottom left. Paris, Jeu de Paume. This is considered
Cezanne's first impressionist masterpiece. It was painted at Auvers,
the ~ome of Dr Gachet. Not far away, at Pontoise, lived Pissarro,
whose influence clearly appears in this painting, both in colour and
in composition. But the spirit, the energy and feeling for structure
were all Cezanne's own. His colour was now becoming very much
freer and was already ' colour-light '. And there is a hint of what
Cezanne's brushstroke was to become: ilat, transparent, yet solid.
14-15 A modern Olympia, 1872-3. Oil on canvas, 46x55 cm.
Paris, Jeu de Paume. Another version of this subject was painted
in 1870. Why did Cezanne adopt. the theme of Manet's famous
masterpiece, which had been executed ten years earlier? It was
probably with an ironic intention, not towards Manet, but towards
the romanticism which had held Cezanne in thrall for some years.
The man in front of Olympia is Cezanne himself. The manner of
painting is romantic, so that the irony emerges from the essential
form of the painting. We may, in fact, consider this work a kind
of ' caprice '.
16 The house of Dr Gachet at Auvers, 1873. Oil on canvas,
56 X 46 cm. Private collection. This painting is mentioned in one of
Van Gogh's letters: he saw it at the shop of Le Pere Tanguy, the
dealer in impressionist and neo-impressionist paintings. It was here
that Vollard first discovered the Master of Aix.
17 Auvers, panoramic view, 1873-5. Oil on canvas, 65x81 cm.
Chicago, Art Institute. Auvers was a favourite place for the
impressionists to go and paint. The landscape is colourful both
in spring and summer, and has wide and open views. In this
painting Cezanne stands back from the immediate view in order
to represent the broad and airy quality of the landscape. More than
the preceding works, this seems to follow the impressionist theories
very closely: it is more sensitive in touch, more vibrant in colour,
fresher in execution. Yet, here again, the distinguishing mark of
Cezanne is clearly present: in the structural effect of the well-defined
33
roofs, bringing a decisive firmness to the looser texture of the
landscape - the firmness, in fact, which we associate with Cezanne.
18 Dahlias In a Delft vase, 1873-5. Oil on canvas, 73 X 54 cm.
Signed at bottom left. Paris, Jeu de Paume. This was painted at
Dr Gachet's house, where Pissarro painted a similar work.
19 Cup and milk jug, 1873·7 Oil on canvas, 20.5X18.5 cm.
Tokyo, Ishibashi Collection. This is a splendid still-life, in which
Cezanne's concern to give objects a geometric solidity can clearly
be seen. In this Cezanne soon reached perfection, and his paint too
became less heavy, especially in the landscapes; it tended to remain
thicker in the still-lifes.
20 The Jas de Bouffan, 1875·6. Oil on canvas, 46X55 cm. Zu-
rich, private collection. A lively and sensitive study of a view of
the property bought by Cezanne's father in 1859.
21 Self-portrait, 1875·7. Oil on canvas, 55X47 cm. Munich, Ba-
yerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen. During his lifetime Cezanne
painted thirty or more self-portraits, usually half or three-quarter
length. At this date he was a little over thirty-seven years of age.
22·3 Proven~al landscape, 1875·8. Watercolour, 37.5X49.5 cm.
Zurich, Kunsthaus. Cezanne was a great watercolourist. This rapid
technique enabled him to show the essential features of a landscape
in a few rapid touches. Between one colour and the next, the
whiteness of the page is used to enhance the structural effect.
24-5 Still-life with apples, 1877-8. Oil on canvas, 38X55 cm.
Signed at bottom right. Paris, Musee de l'Orangerie. The setting
out of the objects required for a still-life was a slow and well-
considered process for Cezanne even when, as in this case, the fruit
and dish with biscuits appear to have been arranged without . any
kind of order. The fact is that Cezanne's was not the order which
followed the canons of traditional composition. His still-lifes •were
arranged in the kind of order which avoided a ' manufactured '
appearance, while maintaining a rigorous sculptural quality, as in
this canvas, where the narrow horizontal plane, on which the fruit
bears down in a brilliantly conceived counterpoint of colour, gives
unity to the work. It took Cezanne an excessive amount of time
to complete a painting, so that in the meantime the fruit used
to go bad. He was forced to have recourse to artificial fruit, which
would never change colour in the course of his work. Nonetheless,
his still-lifes always have the authentic quality of natural objects,
although of an unusual firmness and solidity.
26-7 Mountains In Provence, 1878-80. Oil on canvas, 54X73 cm.
Cardiff, National Museum of Wales.
28 Chateau de Medan, 1880. Watercolour, 31 x 46 cm. Zurich,
Kunsthaus. This work was painted at the beginning of cezanne's
period of constructivism. The breakaway from pure impressionism
34
was now complete. He made an oil painting from this watercolour,
taking the same viewpoint. Although painted at the same time as
the watercolour, the oil reveals a growing tendency to make the
form geometrical and proceed by masses. It was probably painted
during the summer he spent at Medan as a guest of Zola.
29 Woman with a fan, 1879-82. Oil on canvas, 81 x65 cm. Zur-
ich, E. G. Biihrle Foundation. This is another portrait of Madame
Cezanne. One often has the impression, on looking at a portrait
by Cezanne, that there is a lack of emotion and expression of
individuality in the sitter. From more than one point of view
this impression is justified. Cezanne's portraits never have the
immediacy or the psychological emphasis which are characteristic
of the other impressionists. Nor have they that weight of emotion
which pours from Van Gogh's portraits. This is not what interested
Cezanne: he preferred to show what is constant in a character,
the •immutable truth' and primary substance of his personality.
30-1 Still-life, 1879-82. Oil on canvas, 28 X 34 cm. Emery Reves
ColleC:tion. The cup and jug are the same as in the still-lifein pl. 19.
There is also a dec~nter. Although the date given by Venturi,
1873-7, would place this a few years earlier, the two works were
probably painted within a short time of each other.
32 Poplars, 1879-82. Oil on canvas, 62X78 cm. Paris, Jeu de
Paume. This is an oil painting which has all the spontaneity of
a sketch. It should be observed that Cezanne's development, from
true impressionism to constructivism, and from constructivism to
the synthetic period, did not follow a rectilinear pattern of constant
progression. Its course was far more complex and varied, more in
the direction of a spiral than of a straight line. This may be seen
from the present work.
33 Madame Cezanne in a garden, 1879-82. Oil on canvas,
81 X 65 cm. Paris, Musee de l'Orangerie. This was painted at the
same period as pls 26-7. The background is left partly unpainted,
which places it in the category of the studies.
34 Farmyard at Auvers, 1879-82. Oil on canvas, 63 x 52 cm.
Paris, Jeu de Paume. This is one of the finest examples of Cezanne's
•constructivist' period.
35 Self-portrait, 1880-1. Oil on canvas, lOXlO cm. Paris, Jeu
de Paume. This painting belonged to Pissarro and then to the writer
Octave Mirbeau. It has the vigour of a sketch, begun with great
enthusiasm, then left unfinished.
36 Two Bathers, 1879-82. Oil on canvas, 40 X 32 cm. Rome,
Marlborough Gallery. A painting of great beauty, which clearly
shows Cezanne's method of treating the human anatomy according
to sculptural rather than naturalistic criteria.
37 Auvers-sur-Oise seen from Val Harne, 1879-82. Oil on canvas,
73 X 92 cm. Zurich, private collection.
35
38-9 Twisted tree, 1882-5. Oil on canvas, 46 X 55 cm. A. Stoll
Collection.

40 The Bridge at Mainey, 1882-5. Oil on canvas, 60x73 cm.

Paris, Jeu de Paume. This work also has the title: The Little Bridge.
It is an admirable example of Cezanne's ' constructivism '. The
ideal Cezanne set before himself, to paint nature in its truth,
is here fully realized. Nothing remains -of his romantic vision of
nature but the essence of the natural theme stated in all its
objective beauty.

41 Marseilles Bay seen from L'Estaque, 1883-5. Oil on canvas,

58 X 72 cm. Paris, Louvre. This is a subject dear to Cezanne. Another
work with the same title and painted at about the same time is
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. An equally
beautiful painting of the same view is in the Art Institute of
Chicago. Cezanne liked to paint landscapes from above: he thus
gained a broad view, and would circumscribe and block in the
landscape with a sure hand. This Mediterranean scene is at one
and the same time simple and majestic, human and primordial. The
sea appears to rise up vertically as far as the distant mountains.

42-3 Still-life, 1883-7. Oil on canvas, 73 X 87 cm. Munich, Bayer-

ische Staatsgemaldesammlungen.

44 The Blue Vase, 1883-7. Oil on canvas, 61 X50 cm. Paris, Jeu
de Paume. This is one of the most perfect flower paintings of
Cezanne. The work is pervaded by a diffused blue, yet at the same
time the colours are fresh and lively. But the painting is most
interesting from the point of view of the structure: the composition
is clear-cut, with the horizontal plane of the table, the two wings
on the sides (the window and patch of blue on the left) and the
diagonal of the settee, which introduces an ' anomaly ' between
horizontals and perpendiculars. These 'anomalies' were very much
liked by Cezanne and added a strange note to the picture, 'as if
there were an invisible inquietude lurking behind the static geometric
forms.

45 The Five Bathers, 1885-7. Oil on canvas, 65X65 cm. Basie,

Kunsthaus. The subject of bathers is a constantly recurring theme
in Cezanne's art. Its presence was especially marked from 1875-71
from 1878-82, from 1883-7, from 1890-4, and finally from 1898 until
his death. The theme is fundamentally a classical one, but it is given
a new note of naturalism, a happy innocence, through the rhythm
of the bodies and the clear light shining among the greenery.
46 Madame Cezanne, 1885-90. Oil on canvas, 81 x65 cm. Paris,
Musee de l'Orangerie.

47 Houses on the banks of the Marne, 1888-9. Oil on canvas,

65 X 81 cm. Washington, United States Government.
36
48-9 Kitchen table, 1888-90. Oil on canvas, 65X81 cm. Paris,
Louvre. Also known as Table with Bread Basket.

50-1 The Card Players, 1890-2. Oil on canvas, 45X57 cm. Paris,
Jeu de Paume. Cezanne painted five versions of this subject. Those
with four or five card players are probably of earlier date than the
versions with only two; at least that is Venturi's opinion. They
were all painted at Aix between 1890 and 1892. This was the culmi-
nation of the synthetic period and from this point of view, the
version in the Jeu de Paume is certainly the farthest advanced. All
these paintings contain something which recalls Courbet's Afternoon
at Ornans: they have the same strength and rustic vigour, the same
simplicity and grandeur. Of course, Cezanne brought everything
within the ambit of his own ideal. If we may say that his intention
of capturing the • heroism of the real ' can have a special application
to any one group of works, there is no doubt that this group would
be the five versions of The Card Players. Yet although their structure
is powerfully represented in its absolute essential aspect, these works,
and especially this one in the Jeu de Paume, have a richness of
pictorial texture, a delicacy and variety of tone and of light and
shade, which is really extraordinary. Here Cezanne's technique reaches
its highest point of intensity. This is • pure ' painting, not in the
sense of pure form, without human content, but of a human presence
identified with form, and free from any virtuosity or external
commentary. It is pure in the sense that its style is wholly true,
not an artistic exercise.

52 Woman with coffee pot, 1890-4. Oil on canvas, 130 x 97 cm.

Paris, private collection. Cezanne's son dates this work 1887, but
Venturi ascribes it to the same period as The Card Players; it is
certainly close to these paintings in the simplicity of its style.

53 Man with a pipe, 1890-4. Oil on canvas, 73x60 cm. London,

Courtauld Institute of Art. This work is part of the same cycle as
The Card Players. cezanne did several drawings an.d paintings of
this type of person; he was attracted by their calm, their ancient
wisdom, the almost ritualistic world of their gestures.

54 Madame Cezanne In a red. dress, 1890-4. Oil on canvas,

91X70 cm. Sao Paulo (Brazil), Museu de Arte. This, perhaps the
purest of all the portraits of his wife which Cezanne painted at
about this time, seems to be suspended in the deep red dress, against
the pale green background. The unnatural inclination of the body
towards the left - another of Cezanne's • anomalies ' - gives the
portrait an intimacy and sense of mystery, and within its static form
there is a slight sense of loss of balance.

55 Cezanne In a soft hat, 1890-4. Oil on canvas. Tokyo,

Ishibashi Collection. This is one of the most spontaneous of his
self-portraits.
37
56-7 The house at Bellevue, 1890-4. Oil on canvas, 60X73 cm.
Geneva, private collection. This work may be considered a counterpart
to The Card Players in the sphere of landscape.
58 Boy in a red waistcoat, 1890-5. Oil on canvas, 79 .5 x 64 cm.
Zurich, Biihrle Foundation. This is one of a group of portraits in
which the same sitter appears, in melancholy and thoughtful mood.
The range of colours is more complex than usual.
59 Forest, 1892-4. Oil on canvas. Washington, United States Gover-
ment.
60-1 Rocks in a wood, 1894-8. Oil on canvas, 48.5 x 59 .5 cm.
Zurich, Kunsthaus. Cezanne was always particularly interested in
painting rocks, but it was about this time that his paintings of rocky
landscapes assumed a singular beauty and significance. Among these
is the painting Rocks at Fontainebleau, now at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York. The painting illustrated here is no less
fine. Perhaps it was the feeling of a primordial nature contained in
the rocks, perhaps their compact, solid and bare form, which so greatly
interested Cezanne. Whatever the cause, this subject fitted ideally
into Cezanne's vision of painting. For Cezanne these were years of
solitude, and this solitude seemed to be reflected in the deserted
rocky landscape.
62-3 Still-life with apples and oranges, 1895-1900. Oil on canvas,
54 X 73 cm. Paris, Jeu de Paume. In these five years Cezanne pro-
duced a splendid series of still-lifes, of which this is perhaps the
richest in texture and colour. It seems to have been painted in one
of his rare moments of happiness.
64 Still-life with onions and bottle, 1895-1900. Oil on canvas,
66 X 81 cm. Paris, Jeu de Paume. This is another still-life, one of
the same series as pls 62-3. However, it is less richly coloured, and
more rustic. Note the rim of the glass, which opens vertically - a
foreshadowing of the cubists. •
65 Man with crossed arms, 1895-1900. Oil on canvas, 92X73
cm. New York, Guggenheim Museum.
66 Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1899. Oil on canvas, 100 x 81
cm. Paris, Petit Palais. Besides being painted by Cezanne, Vollard
was also the subject of portraits by Bonnard, -Maurice Denis, Renoir,
Picasso, Rouault and Dufy. He was a great dealer, a man of vision,
and organized many exhibitions. It was he who organized Cezanne's
first large exhibition in 1895. He was also responsible for arranging
the first French exhibition of Picasso's work in 1900, and of Matisse
in 1904.
67 Park at ChAteau Noir, 1900. Oil on canvas, 73X60 cm.

68-9 The Great Bathers, 1900-5. Oil on canvas, 130 X 95 cm.

Paris, private collection. The return to this theme towards the end
38
of his life corresponds in cezanne to a renewal of that youthful
enthusiasm which had inspired his first romantic period. Of course,
none of his stylistic and expressive achievements, gathered in the
course of his long experience, was rejected here. It is here that
his first romantic aspirations, his search for a form of classicism,
his impressionistic feeling for nature, find their soundest point of
fusion.
70·1 The Great Bathers, 1898-1905. Oil on canvas, 208X249
cm. Philadelphia, Museum of Art. This is the painting in the series
in which Cezanne was most deeply involved, and also the largest
canvas he ever painted. It is said to have taken more than seven
years co paint. The brushstrokes are broad, free and limpid. What
has been said of the previous work applies here too. What must be
added is that in this particular composition, in which Cezanne is
seeking an effect of grandeur and monumentality, a concern for an
order of composition is more apparent, both in the arrangement of
the nudes in two groups and in the triangular structure marked by
the ~rees which meet in the upper central portion of the canvas.
72 The Red Rock, 1900. Oil on canvas, 91X66 cm. Paris, Musee
de l'Orangerie. The square rock, orange-red on its right side, the sun
of the same colour but with violet shadows, the greenish-blue foliage
and bright blue sky, make of this painting i.omething simultaneously
solid and ardent.
73 Country road, 1900·6. Oil on canvas, 81X65 cm. Munich,
Bayerische Staatsgemfildesammlungen.
74·5 Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1904·6. Oil on canvas, 13 x 92 cm.
Philadelphia, Museum of Art. This is the last of Cezanne's great
themes. What has been said of Cezanne's return to· lyricism in The
Great Bathers applies also to this series of paintings. In the course
of his career, Cezanne depicted Mont Sainte-Victoire at least sixty-five
times, in sketches, drawings and oils.
76·7 Mont Salnte-Victolre, 1904-6. Oil on canvas, 65X81 cm.
Zurich, Kunsthaus. A rapidly executed work, with broad, square
brushstrokes. It is almost a sketch, vibrant with light yet firm.
78·9 Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1904·6. Oil on canvas, 60X73 cm.
Basie, Kunsthaus. This is perhaps the most ' enraptured ' of the repre-
sentations of Cezanne's mountain: a profound and total rapture,
yet expressed without mysticism and without losing sight of the
objective beauty of the world.

39