Paul Cézanne, The Great Ermint Painter

Paul Cézanne was a French painter who many consider a pioneer of the open brush strokes characteristic of Post-Impressionism . His work formed a bridge between the Impressionism of the late 19th century and the new line of artistic research of the early 20th century, Cubism.

The mastery of design, tone, composition and color that encompasses his work is very characteristic. His way of painting is unique and can be easily recognized around the world. Both Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso were greatly influenced by Cézanne.

Childhood and youth

The famous painter Paul Cézanne was born on January 19, 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, France. His mother seems to have been the main influence in his early years, for his vision towards life and art .

His father, Philippe Auguste, was the co-founder of a banking company that prospered throughout the artist’s life . This company provided the painter with financial security that was not common at the time and that most of his contemporaries did not enjoy. At the end of his life, the family business would leave the painter with a great inheritance.

He attended elementary school along with his younger sisters, Marie and Rose . Later, he continued his studies at the Saint Joseph school in Aix.

In 1852, Paul Cézanne entered the Collège Bourbon, where he met and befriended Émile Zola . This friendship was decisive for the two men: with youthful romanticism, they envisioned successful careers in Paris’s burgeoning art industry: Cézanne as a painter and Zola as a writer.

Beginning of his career

Cézanne began studying painting and drawing at the École des Beaux-Arts de Aix in 1856, but his father objected to his artistic career. In 1858, his father convinced him to enter the law school of the University of Aix-en-Provence .

Cézanne continued his law studies for several years. However, he combined these studies simultaneously with the École des Beaux-Arts in Aix, where he remained until 1861 .

In 1862, after a series of bitter family disputes, the aspiring artist received a small allowance and was sent to study art in Paris. He had planned to move in with Zola.

He appeared before l’école des Beaux-Arts in Paris. However, his application was rejected. For that reason, he began his artistic studies at the Académie Suisse.

The circle of artists

The Académie Suisse was a studio where young art students could work with live models for a very modest monthly fee . There, Cézanne met painters such as Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, and Auguste Renoir.

His painting at this time was in a vein of unbridled and rude romanticism. In his paintings of the time, Cézanne showed a certain predilection for themes such as violence and eroticism . A completely different style from that of his more mature works that would consecrate him as a painter.

All the young people at the Académie Suisse at the time were also artists with difficulties . Soon, they would be among the founding members of the nascent Impressionist movement.

Although Cézanne had been inspired by visits to the Louvre and, in particular, by studying Diego Velázquez and Caravaggio, he doubted his vocation after five months in Paris. For this reason, he decided to return to Aix and enter his father’s bank, although he never left art school.

In 1869, he met Hortense Fiquet, a model and seamstress, who became his lover and subsequently bore him a son, Paul, born in 1872. Paul Cézanne kept them a secret from his family; He was terrified of his overbearing father’s reaction . Finally, he married Hortense in 1886, shortly before his father’s death.

In 1886, Cézanne fell out with Zola for what he interpreted as lightly disguised references to his own failures in one of the writer’s novels . As a result, he broke off relations with his oldest supporter.

Cézanne in Aix, the years of greatest production

In the same year, he inherited his father’s wealth and finally, at the age of 47, he gained financial independence; but socially he remained isolated. After the death of his father, he inherited the family estate ‘el Jas de Bouffan’.

The estate appears in many of his paintings, and from that time on, Cézanne lived mainly in Aix. He devoted himself mainly to some of his favorite subjects: portraits of his wife Hortense, still lifes and, above all, the landscape of the Province, especially Mount Sainte Victoire.

Cézanne was interested in the underlying structure. Thus, his paintings rarely give an obvious indication of the time of day or even the season depicted.

His later paintings are generally more composed and open, infused with a feeling of air and light . The third dimension is created through perspective or shortening, but through remarkably subtle tonality variations.

In 1872, he settled in Auvers sur-Oise , near Pontoise , the home of Camille Pissarro . Here, Cézanne began a long and fruitful association with Pissarro. In the last year of his life, he still described himself as a ‘pupil of Pissarro’.

Color and light in his paintings

Many of Cézanne’s early works were painted in dark tones applied with heavy, flowing pigments . In this way, it followed in the wake of the romantic and whimsical expressionism of previous generations.

Under the tutelage of Pissarro, and in a short period of time between 1872-73, Cézanne changed from dark tones to bright tones . In addition, he began to focus on scenes of farmland and rural villages.

He exhibited with the Impressionists in 1874 and did so again in 1877. However, Cézanne never identified with the Impressionist group or fully adopted its aims and techniques. Well, he was more interested in the structural analysis of nature.

He traveled a lonely and difficult path toward his goal of an art that did not superficially appeal to the eye, but to the mind . This art would combine the best of the classical French structure tradition with the best of contemporary Realism.

His work was practically unknown throughout his life . In 1895, Ambroise Vollard, an ambitious Paris art dealer, organized a display of Cézanne’s works, which were successfully promoted in subsequent years.

By the time of his death in 1906, Cézanne had achieved legendary status.

Legacy

When looking at Cézanne’s late work, it is impossible to miss the emergence of a unique artistic approach . Cézanne offered a new way of understanding the world through art.

With his reputation constantly evolving in the later years of his life, a growing number of young artists fell under the influence of his innovative vision. Among them was the young Pablo Picasso.

Under the influence of Cézanne, Picasso would soon lead the Western tradition of painting in an entirely new and unprecedented new direction.

It was Cézanne who taught the new generation of artists to unleash the form of color in their art . Thus, they created a new and subjective pictorial reality, not simply a slavish imitation.