Paul Cezanne's early works. Paul Cezanne short biography
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CEZANNE, PAUL(Cézanne, Paul) (1839–1906) - French painter of the post-impressionist period. Most of the life of Cézanne, who was born and died in Aix-en-Provence, occurred in the 19th century, but his work remained virtually unnoticed until the 90s, when young artists began to show interest in him, then the most competent collectors and art lovers.
After 1900, he quickly gained worldwide fame; he becomes the most influential artist in the history of art, who gave, according to one French art critic, “the direction of all painting of the first half of the 20th century.”
“His work,” notes M.K. Jalard, “is not associated with any of the movements of the 19th century. Its real place is in the history of 20th century art.”
Cezanne failed in his attempts to enter the Paris School of Fine Arts (1861 and 1862), but painting became the main work of his life. Early works are associated with a passion for Caravaggio, El Greco, Delacroix (1860–1872); the next seven-year period, Cezanne actively collaborates with impressionist artists - Monet, Renoir. Participates in the First Exhibition of Impressionists, refuses to participate in the Second (1876) and gives seventeen paintings for display at the Third (1877). After 1879 he moved away from impressionism. In subsequent years, his paintings were systematically rejected by the most representative art forum in Paris - the Autumn Salon.
His special gift manifests itself at the moment when, not finding satisfaction in impressionism, he finds his own method. The formation takes place in the 80s, when Cezanne finally overcomes the most fruitful period for his creative maturation - the transition period.
At this time, his attention was attracted by those who can be called realists: Poussin, Daumier, Courbet. At the same time, the powerful influence of Pizarro was decisive for his development, about whose teaching talent one of his students said: “He was the kind of teacher who could teach even a stone how to draw accurately.”
After Pontoise, where Cézanne worked in 1872–1873 together with Pizarro, his painting was transformed. In the painting 1873 House of the Hanged Man objects illuminated by the slanting rays of the sun seem to be shrouded in a light haze. There are still no characteristic Cezanne elongated strokes here, but verticals, marked by spots of color, already appear, building perspective and creating depth in the picture. Allegorical and literary subjects of the early period are disappearing. A careful study of Pizarro's technique, his special manner of applying paint in small planes, gives Cezanne the impetus to discover his own way of modeling form with color.
At the end of 1873, Cézanne settled near Pontoise, in Auvers, in the house of Dr. Gachet, an etcher, a friend of Pizarro and other artists, in particular Van Gogh, who made his portrait. Gachet becomes one of the first buyers of Cezanne's works.
Taking the lessons of impressionism, Cezanne remains himself. “Monet is just an eye,” he says and adds: “But what an eye!” By building the composition of the landscape in front of him, he reconstructs reality: he deforms objects, enhances the tone, achieving weight, volume, depth and harmony of the whole. He is not embarrassed by the disproportions and asymmetries that the general structure of the composition requires; The plastic parts of the depicted figure or object are always precisely sculpted. He says: “You need to go in the direction of the classics, but through nature, that is, through sensation.” This “but” is a tribute to impressionism and at the same time to the order of nature, which he sought to penetrate and which he never replaces with external resemblance.
Scenery Poplars, painted around 1879–1882 in Provence, allows one to see Cézanne developing his own style of writing. Instead of a spot that softly outlines the volume and organizes the composition, clear, almost relief vertical, oblique and horizontal strokes appear here, modeling the space of the picture and the shape of objects. The essence of the new method is to depict the plastic richness of nature through its coloristic richness, which must not only be seen, but also understood. “There is no painting either light or dark, but only this or that combination of tones. The more diverse and rich it is, the stronger, more accurate and more pleasing to the eye the transmitted sensations... Contrasts and connections between them are the whole secret of the drawing and model,” he says.
Moving away from impressionism, which makes the world ephemeral, dissolving objects in the atmosphere, in the changing play of light and shadow, Cezanne considers it necessary to return to the classical foundations of painting, he calls for creating “substantial art, like the one we see in museums.”
He proposes to use what has been achieved without destroying the classical pictorial system; he speaks of the need to reconcile the fleeting and the permanent, the vagaries of chiaroscuro and the structure of objects, space and volume with the richness of the color scheme. Attention to structure, to the volumetric “sculptural” modeling of objects - mountains and rocks, houses and tree trunks - will be brought to its logical conclusion by cubism with its no longer even sculptural, but “architectural” principle of modeling.
His stay in the south, where he returned in 1878 and where he remained until the end of his life, played a certain role in the formation of a new manner - the Cézanne style itself. Dry transparent air, sharp boundaries of light and shadow here reveal the plasticity of objects and make their outlines clear. The bright sun clearly outlines the form, highlights the essential, destroying everything ephemeral and unstable.
He works in the vicinity of Aix, in Gardennes-Estaque. In his desire for monumentality and stability, he gives a stable, weighty form to even such changeable things as the sea, grass, and tree crowns. The same desire manifests itself in relation to color. The coloring of objects in his paintings is always subordinated to a certain general coloring and at the same time accurate in its own way, coming from knowledge of things - be it a human face, fruits, flowers or landscape elements. He says that to paint a landscape he needs knowledge of its geology. The peculiarity of his method is that, despite all the scrupulous elaboration of color, composition, and design, something remains in the picture. teasing unfinished. This apparent incompleteness reveals the depth of the method he discovered, which he says is only at its very initial stage. The possibility of developing and improving this method in the way he found to overcome the contradiction between the desire for self-expression and loyalty to nature, between the ideal harmony of art and reality with its own order. The derivative of these relations is specific deformation nature - and there is what is commonly called style. Cezanne is unique in this regard. Until his last days, he continued his search and, even recognizing his own discovery, saying that he had found a new path in painting, he repeated: “I am a primitive savage in relation to the method I have found,” “I am only a milestone on this path - others will come.” "
He remains first and foremost an artist for artists for the reason that, despite all the splendor of his painting, the goal he set for himself remained beyond what was achieved. His discovery is seen as a universal method, as a common property, and his painting looks like an invitation to continue what he started. In the early 1900s, before others, it was recognized by young artists, for whom the problem of synthesizing the internal subjective state and the external world - objective reality - is always alive and relevant. During the period of an artist’s formation, the conflict between a fresh, direct perception of the world and the desire to structure and order it, based on theoretical premises, is especially acutely felt. Sometimes it seems that in Cezanne’s later years theory takes precedence over the direct vision of nature.
Naturally, it is precisely this bias towards abstract design: the geometrization of form, the construction of composition, the transformation of the color of a picture into an independent value - first of all, it becomes the subject of attention of artists of different directions - from Nabis and Fauves to Impressionists and Cubists.
And yet it seems unfair, essentially incorrect, to assume that Cézanne, in his passion for problems of color and volume, goes into pure form-creativity, that he distinguishes in the depicted objects “only the richness of tones, the purity of form and its completeness, transforming still life objects into excitingly convincing plastic symbols " Drawing attention to the fact that the still life, which occupies a large place in Cezanne’s work, is, in principle, the most convenient object for formal experiments, the author of the article on Cezanne, J.E. Muller, wonders whether it is possible to say that Cezanne interprets all of his subjects except landscape, in the spirit of still life. Perhaps the characteristics of the person being portrayed were not the artist’s goal, but Cezanne’s painting, which did not neglect a single detail, transforms nature into an artistic image in the process of scrupulously studying it, nature. The result of this installation is penetration into the deep essence of the depicted object. In comparing a portrait with a still life, the only thing that is true is that in both cases the result is achieved by the same method of “reading” and interpreting the model through penetration into the most complex relationships of tones and color combinations - not mechanically copied, but also not replacing the order of reality artificial order. (Such “substitutions,” including invented psychological characteristics, are typical of modern naturalistic painting.)
His portraits are, as it were, cleared of the unimportant, changeable, those superficial annoying characteristics that salon portraitists usually impose on us.
This tendency to penetrate into the structural foundations of the depicted and disdain for the changeable - no matter how spectacular it may be - intensifies in the last years of his life. His famous series of paintings and sketches Mount Sainte-Victoire- this is an artistic study of a chosen subject - almost an anatomy of natural harmony: a combination of masses and plans, space and light - exclusively through the means of painting.
After the death of his father, a local banker (1886), the artist lived in Aix-en-Provence, devoting himself entirely to painting, only traveling briefly to Switzerland (1841), Giverny (1894), where he stayed for some time with Monet. Between 1882 and 1895 Cézanne painted a number of portraits: Madame Cezanne, Gustave Geffroy, Young man etc. 1892 turned out to be especially fruitful for him, when five versions of the famous Card players, numerous options Mount Sainte-Victoire and a number of paintings on the theme Bathers.
Cézanne's rapidly growing fame began after his first solo exhibition, organized in 1895 by Ambroise Vollard. Since that time, his authority among artists can hardly be overestimated. In 1900, Maurice Denis created a large painting in honor of Cézanne, depicting a group of famous French artists. In the center of the picture, which is called Praise for Cezanne, on the easel is a still life by Cezanne; Around him, in addition to Denis himself and his wife, O. Redon, E. Vuillard, P. Sérusier, as well as Vollard and others. In the same year, at the Exhibition of the century three paintings by Cezanne are placed in a place of honor. In 1904, at the exhibition of the Autumn Salon, a separate room was already allocated to him. At this time, the Parisian press writes: “Cezanne, humiliated and despised throughout his life, pelted with stones by street boys in his hometown, reaps belated laurels at the Exhibition of the Autumn Salon... All the young painters, led by Picasso, flocked to the Grand Palais... Moreover At times, the old master from Aix does not favor enthusiasts who come to his workshop. He endured ridicule for a long time and now believes that they were sent by ill-wishers to laugh at him.”
“Perhaps I came too early,” he told his young admirers. “I am an artist more of your generation than of my own.”
In September 1906, Cézanne wrote to his friend E. Bernard: “I am old, sick and have decided to die at my easel.” His wish came true a month later - on October 22. His last sketch - Gardener written as freshly and energetically as the rest of his works of his mature period.
After Cezanne's death, his influence on world art reaches incomparable proportions. It becomes a kind of absolute standard of painting, against which such various artistic movements as neoclassicism and abstractionism are compared. His painting inspires Braque's Fauvist studies, and under his influence he moves on to Cubism. In his Paris apartment, Braque kept Cezanne’s still life as a shrine until the end of his life. “Manet,” he explained, “is a flower and a root. In Cezanne’s paintings, all the way from the root to the flower, all life is here.”
Dates of life and creativity.
1839, January 6 – Born in Aix-en-Provence.
1855 – Study at Aix College. Friends with Zola.
1858–1860 – Study at the municipal art school in Aix.
1861–1862 – Attempts to enter the Fine Arts School in Paris.
1864 - Cézanne's works were rejected by the Salon.
1865 – Studies at the Academie Suisse in Paris.
1886–1889 and subsequent years - Cézanne's works are regularly rejected by the Salon.
1872 – Works in Pontoise with Pizarro.
1873 – Works in Auvers.
1874 – Participates in the First Impressionist Exhibition.
1876 – Refuses to participate in the Second Impressionist Exhibition.
1877 – Works with Pizarro in Pontoise, as well as in Auvers and Issy-les-Moulineaux.
1878 – Works in Aix. Rejected by Salon.
1879 – Works in Estac.
1881 – Works with Pizarro and Gauguin in Pontoise.
1882 – Works with Renoir in Estac.
1883 – Meets Monticelli, Monet and Renoir.
1884 – Works in the vicinity of Aix. Signac buys a landscape by Cezanne.
1885 – Works in Estac and Aix.
1886 - Cézanne's father dies. Break with Zola after publication of the novel Creation, in which Cézanne recognizes himself in a failed artist.
1888 - Huysmans's first article about Cézanne in La Cravache.
1889–1890 – Exhibits his work in Brussels with the G20.
1891 - Bernard and Anquetin admire Cézanne's work in an interview published in a Parisian weekly.
1892 – Creates a series of paintings: Card players, Bathers, Mount Sainte-Victoire.
1895 – First personal exhibition at the Ambroise Vollard gallery.
1900 – Cézanne’s paintings are presented at the World Exhibition in Paris. The beginning of his wide fame. M. Denis paints a picture Praise for Cezanne.
1901 – Builds a large workshop in Aix.
1904 – Variations Mount Sainte-Victoire. The Parisian press writes about Cezanne's growing fame.
1906, October 22 - Dies in Aix-en-Provence.
Vil Mirimanov
The famous French painter Paul Cezanne was a pioneer of post-impressionism. Having lived and worked with the most famous masters of impressionism, being influenced by them at the beginning of his career, Cezanne, in search of his own style, went further than his colleagues. Having learned the art of conveying the wonderful states of nature, the artist delved into the search for the formative foundations of everything around him and tried to understand the internal logic of things. The painter's innovative approach did not allow him to receive the success and fame he deserved during his lifetime. Only time put everything in its place.
Throwing of youth
The future artist was born on January 19, 1839 in a small town in the south of France - Aix. Paul was the first-born in the family of the banker Louis - Auguste Cezanne. The father, who started with the production and sale of hats, and then opened his own bank, was a very powerful man, the whole family strictly obeyed his will. The artist’s mother, Anna Elizaveta, gave birth to two more daughters, Maria and Rose, but she adored her first-born, Paul, and always tried to support him. The painter himself idolized and feared his father all his life.
Since childhood, having a passion for drawing, Paul Cézanne, from the age of five, painted the walls of his house with charcoal, even then creating very believable images. But only his mother was proud of his success; his father dreamed of seeing his successor in his son. By the will of his father, in 1849 Paul entered one of the best city schools - the Saint-Joseph School, from where, in 1852, he entered the sixth grade of the prestigious Bourbon College.
In college, the future famous artist Paul Cezanne meets the future famous writer - Emile Zola. THEIR friendship, in the end, played a significant role in the fate of the painter. And then, in his youth, it was Zola who opened the magical world of books and poetry to Paul. The friends often walked, going far from Aix, full of dreams of a wonderful future and pure love.
In 1855, sixteen-year-old Paul graduated from college, having distinguished himself in writing poetry in French and Latin, and not realizing himself as an artist. After graduating from college, Cezanne entered the law faculty, which his father categorically insisted on. At the same time, in the evenings, Paul begins to study at Joseph Gibert's painting school. To the joy of the young man, the father did not see anything reprehensible in this desire of his son.
The newly opened city museum, where paintings were exhibited, became the favorite place of the aspiring artist. Here, and in classes at Giber's school, Paul felt truly happy, he had a dream of becoming an artist. But his father did not want to hear about such a turn in the fate of his only son; he still insisted on the young men studying law, which was completely uninteresting to him. The soul of the young Cezanne dreamed of Paris, where his college friend, Emile Zola, who had by that time moved to the French capital and tried his hand at literary creativity, actively invited him. In the end, Paul Cezanne abandoned his law studies and obtained permission from his father to go to Paris, where Zola convinced him to begin seriously studying painting.
In 1861, the young painter moved to the capital of France and prepared to enter the Academy of Arts. Cezanne begins to attend classes in Lewis's studio, where he meets the future impressionists Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet, who studied drawing, but already had their own formed vision of the development of painting.
Pissarro immediately believed in Cézanne and predicted success for him in the future. But the young artist from the provinces felt like a stranger in the atmosphere of the capital’s workshop. The only friend he made there was his fellow countryman, the dwarf Achilles Amperera, who later enthusiastically painted nude women. Paul Cezanne was very unsure of his abilities and his talent. At times it seemed to him that all his activities were pointless and he needed to return to Aix to become his father's successor. Probably, the artist was tormented by remorse and a feeling of guilt towards his parent, whose hopes he did not live up to. These mental anguish and doubts ultimately led to the artist giving up his favorite painting and in the same 1861 he returned to his hometown.
In Aix, Paul began working at the bank of Cézanne, the eldest, who was incredibly happy about the “return of the prodigal son.” But the joy of both was short-lived. Paul could not live for long without painting and soon, out of melancholy, he again began to attend Giber’s school. After spending a year at home and endless conversations with his father, the young man goes to Paris again, this time having decided to go to school at the Academy of Arts at all costs.
True, while preparing to take the exams, Cezanne suddenly discovered that the art that he intended to study was completely alien to him. Salon painting seemed unnecessary and empty to him. Plus, Paul again began to doubt his own talent. He worked hard, but his dissatisfaction with himself only increased. The result was another failure - the artist was never able to enroll in painting school.
In 1863, he visited the Salon, where he saw the scandalous work of Edouard Manet, “Luncheon on the Grass,” rejected by the public. This epoch-making work, thanks to which a real revolution took place in the art of that time, also changed Cezanne’s vision of the world. It was this that introduced the young artist, like many of his peers, to a new understanding of art.
Fateful for Cézanne was his acquaintance with Frédéric Bazille, which happened in the same year. Basil brought him to Gleyre's studio, where Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and Auguste Renoir came from. Natural timidity, coupled with a quarrelsome character, did not allow Cézanne to join the circle of future impressionists. As a result, the artist always kept to himself, tried not to engage in discussions and conversations and did not participate in their meetings.
In 1864, having received the Salon’s refusal to accept his new works, Cézanne again quit painting and returned to Aix. True, even there he continues to write, unable to give up art. As a result, six months later, Cezanne again comes to Paris to offer his works for participation in the Salon, and again receives a refusal. The artist, upset and almost losing faith in himself, once again goes home with nothing.
In Aix, Paul devotes himself to portraiture. He works hard, but the following year the artist’s works were not accepted by the Salon. Cezanne was completely desperate. He decided that his work would never be understood, but he did not want to write differently. Arriving at the Salon again and exhibiting his works, he receives a mocking ovation, the audience openly laughs at the painter.
But something good also happens at the Salon - someone introduces the artist to Edouard Manet, who speaks warmly of the creative quest of the young talent. Finally, having received positive feedback, and even from his idol, Cezanne gains confidence in the right choice of his creative path. Returning to Aix, the painter becomes something of a celebrity. People are beginning to recognize him on the street, local artists are even trying to copy his work, but the curiosity of the public still remained rather hostile.
Temptation of Saint Anthony
The work “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” (1867-1869, E. Bührle Foundation, Zurich) belongs to Cézanne’s early works. Using a classic religious subject, the artist depicts naked female bodies against the backdrop of nature. Actually, the plot was only a pretext for openly painting nudity. Saint Anthony himself, who, in theory, was supposed to be the central character of the picture, is given a modest place at the left edge of the canvas, and even there, his figure practically merges with the background.
Neither in the face nor in the pose of Saint Anthony is one read the internal struggle of human flesh and spirit. If the artist's goal was to depict a Christian saint struggling with sinful obsession, then one could say that Cézanne's work was a failure. But the painter did not strive for this at all; he was only interested in women’s bodies.
Sharp contrasts of chiaroscuro sculpt the volume using powerful monumental forms. The classic pyramidal composition of the central part of the work itself seems to have nothing to do with the plot: the girls, forming a closed circle with their figures, do not address Saint Anthony at all. They exist independently of him. And only the skillfully arranged figurative group, located at the very edge of the canvas - Saint Anthony and the temptress, who appeared before him in an exaggeratedly frank pose, corresponds to the title of the work. This pair is built according to the classical principle of symmetry. The open pose of the woman showing off her body is contrasted with the closed pose of Anthony, hastily wrapping his rough clothes around him.
It is noteworthy that Cezanne did not depict beauties; he truthfully painted imperfect female bodies. By the way, it would be a stretch to call them beauties: Cezanne is far from idealizing images; he simply paints women. The influence of the Impressionists is felt in the contrasting colored shadows and reflections of the surrounding greenery on the women’s bodies. However, Cezanne uses the discovery of impressionism excessively, almost bringing it to the point of absurdity, which brings his work closer to the works of the Fauvists, who have yet to enter the world art scene.
Personal life
A year later, in 1870, the artist met Hortensia Fike, who became his constant model. Cézanne, together with Fiquet, waited out the war with Prussia that began in the same year in Estac (province of Provence). The painter carefully hid his relationship with the model from his family, otherwise his angry father could have left him without support, which was already barely enough to live on. Only thanks to the meager help of his father did the artist, who was not understood and not accepted by the public, manage to survive, therefore, even when Grotensia’s son Paul was born in 1872, this most important event remained a secret for all those close to Cezanne.
Soon the artist moved to Pontoise, where Camille Pissarro lived - one of the few who believed in Cezanne's potential. A friend's support turned out to be very helpful. The impressionist Pissarro taught that you need to renounce your ego and paint what you see, transferring the real state of nature onto the canvas and without interpreting the world around you.
Here Cezanne is introduced to Dr. Ferdinand Gachet, who was fond of painting and appreciated the “new” art. Gachet immediately declared that he considered Cézanne a great artist and persuaded him to move to his house in Auvers. Gachet's enthusiastic perception of Cezanne's work instilled hope in the painter. No one had ever been interested in his work or taken it seriously before. Here the artist felt the genuine interest of the entire Gachet family in his work and began to paint numerous landscapes, becoming fascinated by the impressionistic method of painting.
Bright personality
The painting “The House of the Hanged Man” (1873, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), despite its gloomy title, is a sunny landscape. The masterful and unusual compositional construction of the canvas is similar to a collage and is based on the combination of different plans.
The foreground introduces the viewer into the space of the picture. Here we see an unremarkable sandy slope, with tree stubs in the lower left corner, placed here as a “starting point” for gradually moving deeper. The second plan is occupied by a building with a dark roof and a hill overgrown with grass, behind which an unsightly “house of the hanged man” opens, as if protruding from the hill and representing the third plan of the picture. Behind it you can see the roof of the house located just below - the fourth plan, behind which buildings with bright red brick walls are depicted.
Following the artist, the viewer's gaze from the lower left corner of the canvas descends along the hillside, meandering among the walls of buildings and uneven terrain and thus revealing the entire depth of space. And the more you look into this space, the more complex it seems. Cezanne conveyed the landscape exactly as he saw it in reality, without reconstructing it using perspective, so the orange houses seem to be standing right on the roof of the nearest building, and the spreading trees in the upper left corner of the composition are absurdly piled up right above the “house of the hanged man.”
It was precisely such compositional absurdities, unthinkable for classical art, that enabled the artist to truthfully depict the world as he saw it. The painting “House and Tree” (1873-1874, private collection) in its compositional structure resembles a fragment of the previous work: the same empty foreground, a white stone building still grows straight out of the hill, against which a branchy tree flaunts. The winding trunk of which seems to cross out the plane of the wall, “spreading” along it like a giant crack. This motif gives strangely exciting dramatic chords to the entire work, creating the impression of the secret that the house holds, as if hidden behind the trunk and branches of a tree.
The canvas “The House of Doctor Gachet in Auvers” (1873, Musée d’Orsay, Paris) is distinguished by the alternation of the first, empty, and the second, overly filled plans. This is how Cezanne creates a harmonious composition. The depicted houses, which the artist sculpts tightly one to another, seem to be cramped on this provincial street. When you look closely at the lines of their walls, it becomes obvious that they are far from even. Cezanne does not strive for clarity of lines; on the contrary, he deliberately distorts them, just like sunlight, which illuminates surfaces unevenly, depending on their texture and proximity to other objects.
Paul Cezanne paints only what he sees, without ennobling his surroundings, as a “correct” artist should do. Already here the artist’s attraction to simple monumental forms is evident, which will become a distinctive feature of the master’s individual style. Under the patronage of Camille Pissarro, Cézanne, in 1874, participated in the first exhibition of the Impressionists. Once again his works are ridiculed, however, his work “The House of the Hanged Man” is bought by a very large collector, which gives hope to the artist, tormented by misunderstanding.
Cézanne’s difficult life is clearly illustrated in his “Self-Portrait” written in 1875 (Museum d’Orsay, Paris). In it we see a noticeably balding artist with an inquisitive and incredulous gaze. Paul Cezanne intuitively searched for his own path in art, which he walked alone, meeting neither approval nor fame. The master's works remained misunderstood, and he himself suffered from lack of demand. Only natural stubbornness and willfulness helped the artist move forward, but constant ridicule and loneliness sometimes made him doubt his own vision of art. This is what causes the distrust of oneself and others that is evident in the painter’s gaze.
In the work “Love Struggle” (“Bacchanalia”, 1875, Collection of A. Harriman, New York), the artist addresses a mythological theme, which allows for a free depiction of the layout in the space of naked intertwining bodies. The expressive canvas gives the impression of a sketch due to the emphasized lack of elaboration of the figures themselves.
A number of compositional techniques aggravate the slightly oppressive impression of the frantic struggle of fiercely passionate lovers: trees hang menacingly, the low horizon emphasizes the huge sky, as if pressing on the heroes, even the swirling clouds with unusually sharply outlined contours seem aggressive. The picture is built on the principle of a theatrical set: cliffs of the banks with trees growing on them serve as backdrops. The lack of depth in the canvas only emphasizes this effect.
An important meeting for Cezanne took place in 1875, when Auguste Renoir introduced him to the avid collector Victor Choquet, who bought one of the artist’s paintings. From that moment their long friendship began. In 1877, the painter created “Portrait of a Seated Victor Choquet” (Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus), in which we see the artist’s friend sitting on a magnificent Louis XVI era chair in a relaxed home environment.
On the walls are visible works of art that are part of the Choquet collection. True, they are not included in the “frame” entirely, but are given in fragments or are only indicated by gilded frames. The artist does not strive to carefully reproduce the furnishings of the room or photographically accurately convey the features of the hero. It creates a generalized image of the collector as an attentive and thoughtful person, capable of intuitively assessing the artistic value of a work. The tall figure of Victor Choquet looks somewhat comical on an antique low chair, the upper edge of the canvas cuts off his gray hair, and the model’s legs and the legs of the chair are painted almost close to the lower edge of the canvas. This creates the impression that the collector is cramped within the allotted frame of the painting.
One of the many portraits of Hortense - “Madame Cezanne in the Red Chair” (1877, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), who, by the way, had not yet become the artist’s official wife, is unusually effective in color scheme. The red upholstery of the chair contrasts with the greenish-olive and blue colors of Hortense's clothes and the wall behind her, and also perfectly highlights the heroine's figure. The work makes a monumental impression thanks to the young woman’s maximum proximity to the viewer. The top edge of the canvas cuts off part of her hair, and the bottom edge cuts off the hem of her skirt. Cezanne's life partner looks away, and her hands with crossed fingers build a psychological barrier between the model and the viewer.
We see a very generalized representation of the terrain features in the landscape “Mountains in French Provence” (1878, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff). Cézanne mentally disassembles objects into their individual constituent forms, and then constructs his own reality from them. This technique will later be a characteristic feature of the constructivists.
Even more “constructive” are the works “Houses in Provence near Estac” (1879, National Gallery, Washington), “Mount Saint Victoria” (1886, National Gallery, Washington) and “House in Provence” (1885, Art Museum Herron, Indianapolis). Stones, hills, walls of dwellings appear before us in the form of generalized forms, passing through the prism of Cezanne’s analytical vision, which cuts off everything unnecessary from them, leaving only the very essence. All the outlines of mountains and fields on the canvas “Mountains in Provence” (1886-1890, Tate Gallery, London) are emphatically correct and geometric.
The artist is actively working, but the Salon continues to reject his works. Cézanne is ridiculed again at the third Impressionist exhibition. True, there is one connoisseur of the artist’s art who regularly buys his works - a young petty official working on the stock exchange named Paul Gauguin.
Having gone through a significant creative path, Paul Cezanne never became an impressionist. His fascination with the impressionistic rendering of the image of nature and the light-air environment was replaced by an awareness of the need for speculative ordering of the surrounding reality. It was not enough for the artist to see and reproduce; he needed to see and convey the hidden structure of the world.
Life's twists and turns
In 1886, a number of events occurred in the painter’s personal life. Firstly, Cezanne, almost against his will (since he was very much in love with a young servant in his father’s house), is married to Hortense, who, at the insistence of family members, moves to Cezanne’s estate in Provence. By this time, the artist’s son Paul was already fourteen years old. Secondly, Cezanne’s youth friend, the already famous writer Emile Zola, publishes the novel “Creativity”, in which the artist acted as the prototype of the main character. The novel perfectly demonstrated Zola's attitude towards Cézanne himself and his art, ending the hero's life with suicide. The painter perceived this gesture as a loud announcement that his old friend did not believe in either the artist himself or his art. Thus ended the friendship between two geniuses of the era - a great writer and a great artist. Thirdly, the painter’s despotic father died, leaving him a substantial inheritance.
Two years later, Cézanne creates a remarkable double portrait of his son Paul, dressed as Harlequin, and his friend, dressed as Pierrot. The painting “Pierrot and Harlequin” (1888, State Museum of Fine Arts named after A. S. Pushkin, Moscow) depicts a scene from the Maslenitsa carnival festival taking place right before Lent (in connection with which the second name of the painting is “Mardigra”, that is, "Maslenitsa"). On the canvas, the father openly admires his son. We see the majestic and arrogant handsome Paul emerging from behind the scenes, looking down at the viewer. Against his background, the detached Pierrot, bent in a rather ridiculous position, seems like a helpful page.
At the request of Hortensia, in 1888 the Cézannes moved to Paris. A year later, the artist’s painting “The House of the Hanged Man,” thanks to the projection of collector Victor Choquet, was presented at the World Exhibition. But the work went unnoticed by the public because it was placed too high.
Once again, Cézanne’s works were not seen and did not want to be seen, and his talent was again left without recognition. The painter was already over sixty, health problems forced him to constantly change his place of residence, but he continued to paint and even fulfilled his youthful dream - he created his own work in the spirit of the work “The Card Players” by Louis Le Nain, which made a great impression on him even in his youth.
The painting “Card Players” (1892, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) is a genre work depicting three young men doing their favorite pastime. The figure of the observer in the background is cut off at the shoulders by the upper edge of the painting, thanks to her, in compositional terms the canvas seems unfinished. Striving for a clear and precise expression of the idea, Cézanne wrote several versions of this work. The final version of the painting of the same name, created around the same time, amazes with its completeness, conciseness and symmetry, to overcome the excessive influence of which, Cezanne cuts off the back of the right player.
The compositional and semantic centers of the picture coincide - these are the hands of two sitting men, who seem to frame a proudly standing bottle of wine. The work is devoid of the strict genre inherent in the previous version. There is nothing superfluous here, everything is very strict and extremely expressive. The players are completely absorbed in their occupation, time seems to have stopped for them, the whole world is concentrated within two figures leaning towards each other. Here and now, the layout of the cards contains the most important meaning; the game for them becomes a kind of sacred rite, thanks to which the picture itself acquires a certain sacred meaning. Perhaps the bottle of wine on the red tablecloth has the traditional symbolic meaning of blood and atonement.
The portrait “Guy in a Red Vest” (1888-1890, Museum of Modern Art, New York) is particularly expressive thanks to its masterful use of color. The solemn combination of red and white colors is enhanced by the abundance of black, which makes the profile of the hero of the canvas extremely clear and contrasting. Cezanne does not avoid black, like many impressionists, but, on the contrary, introduces it into the picture as a formative element. The young man’s hair merges with the black background of the drapery; with this technique, the master seems to “infuse” the model into the space of the canvas, at the same time giving it a certain tragic sound. The image of the person being portrayed is complete and complete, even though there are no specifics in the picture - no indication of time or place, no hint of the type of activity of the young man in the red vest.
Object compositions and landscapes
All still lifes of Paul Cézanne are recognizable: with the simplest minimal set of objects (a few fruits, porcelain vases, plates and cups), deliberately careless draperies with kinks and numerous folds thrown onto the table give the composition a decorative and unique expressiveness.
The painting “Still Life with a Sugar Bowl” (circa 1888-1890, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) is one of Cézanne’s most famous works. Here the painter abandons linear perspective; we do not see a common vanishing point of planes on the canvas.
We see a rectangular tabletop with a white drapery casually thrown over it, laden with porcelain dishes and fruit, from two points of view at once: from above and from the front, which is impossible for traditional art, which, since the Renaissance, has worked to correctly convey a three-dimensional canvas on a two-dimensional plane. space.
Paul Cezanne builds his still life contrary to the main law of painting - perspective. Due to the incorrect construction of space and distortion of perspective, it becomes impossible to determine the distance from the wall to the table, or to the carved wooden legs visible in the background, apparently a jardiniere. The relationship between the parallel and perpendicular planes of the walls, table, floor and drawers also becomes implicit. A space devoid of depth and perspective, built with relative respect for geometry, makes still life similar to religious painting, the style of which was created and approved before perspective, and often ignored it.
Cezanne creates his own coordinate system, in which each object becomes self-sufficient and can itself be a “model” for the artist. The “extra” section of the jardiniere’s legs, at first glance, was introduced for a reason: it is this detail, firstly, that “holds” the entire composition in the upper right corner of the canvas and, secondly, serves as a powerful coloristic accent in the overall cold color background of the upper part of the picture , its brownish shades harmoniously echo the brown tabletop and warm tones of ripe fruit. It is no coincidence that the artist freely arranges objects on the plane of the table, without combining them into groups - if we mentally remove any of them, the integrity of the composition will not be compromised.
The same features are also characteristic of “Still Life with Apples and Oranges” (1895, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), “Still Life with Drapery” (1899, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) and “Still Life with Eggplants” (1893- 1894, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). In the first work, the role of fabrics is especially obvious, forming space with their picturesque folds. It is the luxurious fabrics that fill the entire surface of the canvas. They make perspective unnecessary; in the absence of a familiar coordinate system, space loses its three-dimensionality. A chaotic, at first glance, pile of folds hides the furniture and premises. It is not at all clear where the objects are located. Thanks to this effect, the impression of emphasized decorativeness, and even theatricality, is created, even more enhanced by the flat interpretation of space.
In this still life, the master works extremely expressively with color. Bright oriental fabrics, reminiscent of the exotic draperies of the paintings of the great romantic painting Eugene Delacroix, who was an idol for Cezanne, create the backdrop for a carelessly thrown, folded snow-white tablecloth and a porcelain vase. The viewer's attention is first drawn to this dazzling, complexly constructed spot, in order to enjoy the masterful rendering of the fabric, then concentrate on the bright fruit, as if glowing against a white background. It is the white color that skillfully organizes the entire composition. It prevents the eye from getting lost in the festive colors and wandering around the canvas, bringing rigor to the color scheme and “collecting” the composition towards the center.
With the help of color, the unity of the composition is achieved in “Still Life with Eggplants”. Thanks to the cold blue-lilac tones, the canvas looks surprisingly solid, while having a bright contrast in the form of orange-red apples. The overall tonality of the work smoothes out, like a random arrangement of objects in a still life. If it were not for the color, the ceramic vases, plate and bottle, placed too close to each other, would look like an absurd pile of random things.
One of the evidence of inner depression for artists is “Still Life with Skulls” (1898-1900, private collection). Similar works appeared in world art among the Dutch and belonged to the works of “vanitas” (“vanity of vanities”), symbolizing the frailty of all earthly things. The mortal remains stacked on top of each other are shown in close-up and occupy most of the surface of the canvas. The absence of other objects in the picture and the empty eye sockets, which attract the viewer’s gaze, give rise to blasphemous associations with a portrait, and not with a still life.
Although Cézanne was his father's main heir, his beloved estate in Aix was sold by his family without his knowledge. The personal belongings of Cezanne the elder and even the furniture that the artist remembered from childhood were also destroyed.
Upset by the loss of his home, the painter decides to buy an estate for himself, with the gloomy name of the Black Castle. Despite the fact that this intention was never realized, Cezanne dedicated several of his landscapes to this place - “Forest near the rock caves above the Black Castle” (1900-1904, National Gallery, London), as well as “Mill on the River” ( 1900-1906, Marlborough Art Gallery, London). In them, the artist, as before, breaks down all forms into their component parts, but goes further - in general, the style of the works is closer not to post-impressionism, but to abstraction.
Mount Saint Victoria became Paul Cézanne's favorite place to create his landscapes. He admired her majestic beauty even in his youth. In the late period of his creativity, the master repeatedly painted views of this mountain, conveying its beauty in different atmospheric conditions and under different lighting.
Towards the end of his life, Cézanne conceived a large-format, multi-figure composition of naked bathers in the lap of nature. The artist has long dreamed of painting this canvas and there are several versions of it, created at different times. Due to natural timidity and lack of funds, Cezanne never used the services of models. Therefore, to create his composition from several naked female bodies, he even asked one of his friends to get photographs of female nudes. Perhaps this explains a certain angularity of all the figures created by the artist without relying on nature.
On the canvas “Great Bathers” (circa 1906, Museum of Art, Philadelphia), the painter worked long and hard, carefully thinking through the arrangement of naked figures in space, meticulously checking the rhythm of body lines and outstretched arms, which, together with bent tree trunks, form a harmonious semicircle. The work was supposed to become a masterpiece, a kind of apogee of Cezanne’s work. The artist hoped to find himself through the harmony of “the roundness of a woman’s chest and the shoulders of the hills.” Unfortunately, we will never know what the artist would ultimately like to see in his work, since death interrupted his work.
World fame that came too late
Paul Cézanne was a loner, he followed his own unbeaten path, understood by almost no one and ridiculed by too many. The artist did not want a simple reproduction of nature, he sought to understand its inner essence and convey this fundamental structure on the plane of the canvas. The master’s creativity anticipated the art of cubism and abstraction, depicting reality refracted by the consciousness of a particular person. Cezanne revealed to the world “new art,” completely constructed in his mind, and therefore deeply original and individual.
Only towards the end of his life did recognition gradually begin to come to the artist. In the late 1880s, the Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard became interested in Cezanne's work. First, he studied the master’s works, looked closely at them, and was interested in the opinions of other artists. After much deliberation, Vollard decides to track down Cézanne to organize his first solo exhibition.
Opened in 1895, the exhibition covered all periods of the painter’s work, showing the evolution of his creative vision and revealing the unknown Cézanne to everyone. Those who came to support the artist, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir and Camille Pissarro, were amazed. Monet and Degas immediately bought several works by an old friend, and the Parisian public was already ready to accept Cezanne’s art.
After the first exhibition came the second. Vollar, although inexpensively, consistently bought the artist’s works. Two of his paintings were acquired by the National Gallery in Berlin. But only in 1900, the painter finally gained recognition in his homeland, in Aix, putting an end to bullying and ridicule.
Gradually, thanks to participation in the Paris International Exhibition and other events dedicated to art, Cezanne became famous throughout the world, the artist’s name turned into a legend. However, unfortunately, this well-deserved recognition came to the painter very late. On October 22, 1906, Paul Cézanne died. Only after the artist’s death did his paintings truly find their audience.
- Anniversary exhibition of seaside artist Ekaterina Arkhipova in the Arka gallery
- Lecture “Post-Impressionism. In search of individuality"
Paul Cezanne born on January 19, 1839 in the ancient French town of Aix-en-Provence. The only son of a rude and greedy father, Paul, had practically nothing to do with painting as a child, but received a very good education in other areas. Studying was easy and effective for him. He constantly received school awards in Latin and Greek, and in mathematics.
Drawing and painting were included in the course of compulsory disciplines, but in his younger years Paul did not win any special laurels in this field. It is noteworthy that the annual college drawing prize went to a classmate of the young Cézanne, the future classicist Emile Zola. It is worth noting that the two outstanding Frenchmen managed to carry their strong childhood friendship throughout their lives. And the choice of life path was almost completely determined by Emil’s friendly advice.
In 1858, Cézanne passed the bachelor's exams at the University of Aix, entering the law school operating at the university. Completely devoid of interest in law, young Paul was forced to do so at the insistence of his domineering parent. He “suffered” at this school for two years, and during this time he firmly formed the decision to devote himself to painting.
The son and father managed to reach a compromise - Louis Auguste equipped his son with a workshop, where he, in between legal practices, could devote time to studying artistic skills under the guidance of local artist Joseph Gibert.
In 1861, the father nevertheless sent his son to Paris for real painting training. While visiting the Atelier Suisse, the impressionable Paul Cezanne, under the influence of the local artists, quickly moved away from the academic style and began searching for his own style.
Returning briefly to Aix, Paul then followed his friend Zola to the capital again. He is trying to enter the Ecole de Bozar, but the examiners considered the work he submitted to be too “violent,” which, however, was not so far from reality.
However, 23 years is an age full of hope, and Cezanne, not too upset, continued to write. Every year he presented his creations at the Salon. But the demanding jury rejected all the artist’s paintings. Injured pride forced Cezanne to immerse himself deeper and deeper in his work, gradually developing his own style. Some recognition, along with other impressionists, came to Cézanne in the mid-70s. Several wealthy bourgeois purchased several of his works.
In 1869, Maria-Hortensia Fike became Paul's wife. They lived together for forty years. Cezanne, his wife and son Paul constantly moved from place to place, until finally, in 1885, Ambroise Vollard organized a personal exhibition of the artist. But debts associated with the death of his mother force the artist to sell the family estate. At the turn of the century, he opened his own studio, continuing to work tirelessly until October 22, 1906, when pneumonia interrupted his complex and fruitful life.
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Intelligence and passion, poise and drive, harmony and expression of individuality.
He tried to reconcile classics and modernity, although, as is known, freedom and canon are “two incompatible things.” Classicism asserted the laws of stability and balance, which largely corresponded to the laws of the existing world. Cezanne also believed that the basis of existence is order, not chaos, and the creative force builds harmony out of chaos.
This belief explains Cezanne’s negative attitude towards the painting of many of his contemporaries: Gauguin, Van Gogh, Seurat and others, precisely because he saw in their works the predominance of arbitrariness, his own vision of the world over the search for the basic laws of its real existence. A prominent representative of post-impressionism, Cezanne was an opponent of the decorative approach in painting, because decorativeness, in his opinion, removed volume from painting, depriving the space of the picture of three-dimensionality, which Cezanne considered the greatest achievement of the Renaissance. Cézanne called Gauguin's works "painted Chinese pictures."
P. Cezanne “Bathers” (1906). Canvas, oil. 201.5 x 250.8 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art (USA)
Later, Cezanne became interested in watercolors and transferred some of the techniques of watercolor painting to oil painting: he began to paint on white, specially unprimed canvases. The paint layer on these canvases has become lighter, shining from the inside. Cezanne began to limit himself to three colors: green, blue and ocher, mixed with the white color of the canvas itself. With this minimum of means he achieved the maximum artistic result.
From the biography of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
P. Cezanne. Self-Portrait (1875)
French artist Paul Cézanne was born in the provincial town of Aix-en-Provence in Southern France on January 19, 1839. His father was a hat merchant, and Cezanne was the only son of a powerful father (there were 2 more daughters in the family). Then the father became a co-owner of the city bank.
Cézanne received a good education, especially excelling in mathematics, Latin and Greek.
Cezanne was always interested in art, but did not show any outstanding talents. Drawing was a compulsory subject both at school and at the College, and at the age of 15 he began attending the free academy of drawing.
The father wanted to see his son become a lawyer, but still sent him to Paris in 1861 to study painting and even assigned him a modest salary.
In Paris, Cézanne began studying at the Académie de Suisse, where anyone could enroll by paying a small fee for nature and overhead costs. Camille Pissarro, one of the founders of impressionism, was able to recognize his still modest talent. Emile Zola, his classmate, also supported the young man in Paris. In 1886 this friendship ended in an abrupt break. Zola published the novel “Creation”, the main character of which, a failed artist, was copied from Cezanne. From then on, Cézanne and Zola never spoke or saw each other again.
But at that time, Cezanne had great doubts about his talent and left Paris for his native Aix, joining his father’s bank.
Cezanne's banking service was a burden, and he set himself the goal of becoming an artist. In November 1862 he returned to Paris again.
P. Cezanne “Girl at the Piano (Overture to Tannhäuser)” (1868). Oil on canvas. 57.8 x 92.5 cm. State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg)
The painting was painted on the Cezanne family estate near Aix-en-Provence. The artist’s sister is depicted at the piano, and his mother is shown sewing.
Composer Richard Wagner at that time was a symbol of innovation in music, Cezanne loved his work.
The restrained and intense color scheme of the painting is based on the contrast of black and white, which creates a positive mood. The material world of the picture is balanced by the unity of people and objects in the image. Cézanne's impressionism was completely different, with its own view of the world.
In 1869, Cézanne met Marie-Hortens Fiquet, who earned money by posing. She was 19 years old. In 1872, Hortense gave birth to Cézanne's son, also named Paul. The artist hid the fact of starting a family from his father for a long time, although his mother knew about everything and adored her grandson.
The artist decided to leave Paris and moved with his family to the picturesque town of Pontoise. After 2 years, the family returned to Paris, and this was the time when Cezanne decided to become an artist. He began to paint in an impressionistic manner and took part in the first (1874) and third (1877) impressionist exhibitions. In the same year, Cézanne formalized his marriage to Hortense. The wedding ceremony took place in Aix, and the artist’s father was present, which meant their reconciliation. And in the fall the father died, leaving his son a large inheritance. 47-year-old Cezanne had the opportunity, without worrying about his daily bread, to completely devote himself to painting in the last 20 years of his life.
Confession
Cezanne's works were sometimes exhibited in Paris and other cities, but true recognition did not begin until 1895, when the young collector Ambroise Vollard organized a large solo exhibition of Cezanne (about 150 works). The ordinary public greeted this exhibition lukewarmly, but the young artists were shocked by what they saw, and Cezanne became almost a legend.
In 1901, the artist bought a plot of land on the northern outskirts of Aix and created a studio there. In 1906, while working outdoors, he was caught in heavy rain. While returning with heavy equipment through hilly terrain in a thunderstorm, he fell on the road and was carried home unconscious. A week later, the artist died of pneumonia.
Creation
P. Cezanne. Still life. Vase, glass and apples (1880)
Cezanne's works express the inner life of the artist. Contradictions have always been characteristic of Cezanne: on the one hand, he believed in his talent, and on the other, he constantly doubted his ability to find means of expressing what he saw and wanted to express in the picture. Perhaps this circumstance was the main reason for Cezanne’s fanatical work on his paintings. In mature years, contradictions receded into the background, and an understanding of the brevity of the language of existence itself came to the fore. It was at this stage that Cézanne's best, most profound and meaningful works emerged.
P. Cezanne “Pierrot and Harlequin” (1888-1890). Canvas, oil. 102 x 81 cm. State Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin (Moscow)
This is Cezanne's most famous painting.
Pierrot and Harlequin are traditional characters of the Italian commedia dell'arte (a type of Italian folk (square) theater, performances of which were created using the method of improvisation, based on a script containing a brief plot outline of the performance, with the participation of actors dressed in masks). His son Paul (Harlequin) and his friend Louis Guillaume (Pierrot) posed for Cézanne. The white figure of Pierrot appears to be made of plaster. Harlequin's red and black leotard symbolizes the flame on the coals. The different arrangement of colored curtains on the right and left emphasizes the forward movement of Harlequin and the more static position of Pierrot
The plot of the painting is connected with the Maslenitsa festivities, but there is no hint of a holiday on the canvas: the figures and facial expressions are more like puppets. The characters are just about to take part in a theatrical performance dedicated to Maslenitsa.
Cezanne carefully worked out the small details of the picture and the faces of the characters, which is generally not typical for his work.
P. Cezanne “Still Life with Drapery” (1895). Canvas, oil. 55 x 74.5 cm. State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg)
In this painting, Cezanne depicted a fabric with a floral pattern, a white jug painted with flowers, apples and oranges on two plates, a crumpled light tablecloth and a crumpled translucent napkin... The table seems convex and raised at one edge. Art critic A. Dubeshko notes: “Cezanne deliberately allows such a violation in perspective as a sign of rejection of the usual academic still life, where all objects are viewed from the same angle.”
But the canvas creates the impression of the integrity of the material world.
P. Cezanne "Card Players"
This is a series of 5 paintings by Paul Cezanne, painted by him in the period 1890-1895. The pictures differ from each other in the number of players and size. 4 paintings are kept in museums in Europe and America, and the fifth was until recently kept in a private collection, until it was bought by the Qatari authorities for the national museum.
1890-1892 Canvas, oil. 65.4 × 81.9 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
1890-1892 134.6 × 180.3 cm. Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia)
1892-1893 97 × 130 cm. Family collection of the Emir of Qatar
1892-1895 60 × 73 cm. Courtauld Institute of Art (London)
1894-1895 47 × 56.5 cm. Orsay Museum (Paris)
The theme of the card game is traditional for fine art.
Cezanne's painting can be classified as an everyday genre, but its content is higher and more significant than the depiction of an everyday scene in a tavern.
Cezanne was always absorbed in enormous inner work, strived for spiritual perfection, and never treated people with disrespect or indifference. He values life as being and strives to convey in his works all the components of this being: movement, peace, concentration, tension. “Here are the people,” Cezanne seems to be saying with his painting “Card Players.” And that’s enough, he doesn’t want to further develop the narrative (K. Bogemskaya).
P. Cezanne “Bank of the Marne” (1888). Canvas, oil. 65.5 x 81.3 cm. State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg)
The painting was painted in Chantilly (Northern France). It depicts a lonely two-story manor house with a turret on the banks of the Marne River. The house is surrounded by poplars and willows, which are reflected in the water.
Cezanne believed that his paintings should not be described, nor should one look for some kind of theory or philosophy in them. He did not want there to be intermediaries between his painting and the viewer. The main thing is to look and perceive what is depicted.
Let's try to hear the artist.
