Paul Cézanne and artworks

Natalia Brodskaya

• Publisher: Parkstone International
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781781609569
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Monographs

Since his death 100 years ago, Cézanne has become the most famous painter of the nineteenth century. He was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839 and the happiest period of his life was his early youth in Provence, in company with Emile Zolá, another Italian. Following Zolá's example, Cézanne went to Paris in his twenty-first year. During the Franco-Prussian war he deserted the military, dividing his time between open-air painting and the studio. He said to Vollard, an art dealer, "I'm only a painter. Parisian wit gives me a pain. Painting nudes on the banks of the Arc [a river near Aix] is all I could ask for." Encouraged by Renoir, one of the first to appreciate him, he exhibited with the impressionists in 1874 and in 1877. He was received with derision, which deeply hurt him. Cézanne's ambition, in his own words, was "to make out of Impressionism something as solid and durable as the paintings of the museums." His aim was to achieve the monumental in a modern language of glowing, vibrating tones. Cézanne wanted to retain the natural colour of an object and to harmonise it with the various influences of light and shade trying to destroy it; to work out a scale of tones expressing the mass and character of the form. Cézanne loved to paint fruit because it afforded him obedient models and he was a slow worker. He did not intend to simply copy an apple. He kept the dominant colour and the character of the fruit, but heightened the emotional appeal of the form by a scheme of rich and concordant tones. In his paintings of still-life he is a master. His fruit and vegetable compositions are truly dramatic; they have the weight, the nobility, the style of immortal forms. No other painter ever brought to a red apple a conviction so heated, sympathy so genuinely spiritual, or an observation so protracted. No other painter of equal ability ever reserved for still-life his strongest impulses. Cézanne restored to painting the pre-eminence of knowledge, the most essential quality to all creative effort. The death of his father in 1886 made him a rich man, but he made no change in his abstemious mode of living. Soon afterwards, Cézanne retired permanently to his estate in Provence. He was probably the loneliest of painters of his day. At times a curious melancholy attacked him, a black hopelessness. He grew more savage and exacting, destroying canvases, throwing them out of his studio into the trees, abandoning them in the fields, and giving them to his son to cut into puzzles, or to the people of Aix. At the beginning of the century, when Vollard arrived in Provence with intentions of buying on speculation all the Cézannes he could get hold of, the peasantry, hearing that a fool from Paris was actually handing out money for old linen, produced from barns a considerable number of still-lifes and landscapes. The old master of Aix was overcome with joy, but recognition came too late. In 1906 he died from a fever contracted while painting in a downpour of rain.

Table of contents

• Portrait of the Artist
• The Four Seasons
• Girl at the Piano (Overture to “Tannhäuser”)
• Flowers in a little Delft Vase
• Five Bathers
• Three Bathers
• Road at Pontoise (Clos des Mathurins)
• Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair (Madame Cézanne in a Striped Skirt)
• The Eternal Female
• Still Life with a Soup Tureen
• Self-Portrait
• Bay of Marseille from l’Estaque
• Fruit
• Bridge in Maincy near Melun
• Fruits
• Still Life with Dish, Glass and Apples
• Court of a Farm in Auvers
• Apples and Biscuits
• Pitcher, Fruits and Tablecloth
• Dish of Apples
• Self-Portrait
• Landscape in Provence
• Bassin in Jas de Bouffan
• Self-Portrait in a White Hat
• Plain by Mont Sainte-Victoire
• Mont Sainte-Victoire, View from Bellevue
• Vase of Flowers on a Table
• Portrait of Madame Cézanne
• Bathers in Front of a Tent
• Still Life with a Chest of Drawers
• Self-Portrait with Palette
• Trees and House
• Village in Provence
• The Great Bather
• Tall Trees in Jas de Bouffan
• Path of Chestnut Trees in Jas de Bouffan in the Winter
• Gardanne
• Trees in a Park (The Jas de Bouffan)
• The Jas de Bouffan (detail)
• House and Farm in Jas de Bouffan
• The Aqueduct
• The Great Pine (Mont Sainte-Victoire)
• Blue Vase
• The Banks of the Marne (Villa on the Bank of a River)
• The Banks of the Marne
• Pierrot and Harlequin (Mardi Gras)
• Study for the Painting Mardi Gras
• Peaches and Pears
• Bridge and Pool
• Still Life with Basket
• Portrait of Paul Cézanne, Artist’s Son with Hat
• Harlequin
• Dish with Fruits and Drapery
• Bathers (Study)
• Bathers
• Man Smoking a Pipe
• The Smoker
• The House in Bellevue
• Woman with a Coffee Pot
• Still Life with Bottles and Apples
• Bathers
• Millstone
• Rocks in the Woods
• Pitcher and Fruits
• A Bottle of Peppermint
• View of the Château Noir
• Still Life with Curtain
• Man Smoking a Pipe
• Apples and Oranges
• The Old Woman with a Rosary
• Great Pine near Aix
• The Lake at Annecy
• Mont Sainte-Victoire
• Mont Sainte-Victoire, View from Bibémus
• In the Park of the Château Noir
• Bibémus Quarry
• In the Park of the Château Noir
• The Château Noir
• Flowers (Study)
• Mont Sainte-Victoire
• Bathers
• Woman in Blue
• The Great Bathers
• Mont Sainte-Victoire, View from Lauves
• Mont Sainte-Victoire
• Three Skulls
• The Blue Landscape
• Mont Sainte-Victoire, View from Lauves
• Landscape at Aix (Mont Sainte-Victoire)
• Landscape at Aix (Mont Sainte-Victoire)
• Portrait of Vallier