Chapter

Three

Cézanne

Edited by
Ranya Alesh
Aims of the Chapter
This chapter will:
 Introduce you to the work of the
French artist Paul Cézanne
 Encourage you to consider the
reasons for his reputation
 Provide some general introduction
to the art of painting and some
grounding in relevant technical
terms and concepts
 Encourage you to consider relevant
principles of composition
 Help you discover meaning and
value in the relationships between
works of different kinds
 Outline of Chapter 3 - Cézanne
 The tension between Tradition and Modernity
 The tension between the scholar and the owner
(High/Fine art versus commodity)
 Cézanne as an example of this tension
 Cézanne’s reputation underwent both praise
and blame until he was hailed(honored) as the
pioneer avant-garde.
 Three examples of Tradition and Modernity: The
bathers, the landscape, the still life paintings.
 Cézanne’s Biography

Activity I:
Group Work:
Each group, reads about
his biography (pp. 57-58)
and share with the rest
ONE thing you feel worth
sharing about his life and
achievements.
• He was born in Aix-en-Provence in the south of
France.
• His father achieved some prosperity in a business
making hats, and later became a partner in a small
bank.
• At the end of 1858, following a successful career at
school, Paul Cézanne was obliged by his father to
enrol as a student of law, a course he pursued for
over 2 years.
• At the same time, he was taking classes for free in
drawing.
• In 1861, he travelled to Paris, following his childhood
friend, the novelist Emile Zola.
 Activity II:
Brainstorming:
Look at the painting
and say what comes
to your mind when
you look at it.
1. In May 1999, it was sold for $60.5 million,
the fourth highest price ever paid at
auction for a painting.
2. Is it ‘a good painting’? What is its
significance?

In what follows we will

consider the nature and
formation of the artist’s
reputation over the course
of his working life.
 Tradition versus Modernity
The worker versus the artist
• The Romantics distinguished the poet/artist from
the worker saying that one is born talented and
creative and the other learns through rigorous
training the techniques of art. They believed that
training alone cannot make an artist.
• Cézanne was considered by many to be the
gifted artist who had a genuine “artistic
temperament” but had difficulties with the
techniques of drawing.
 Definitions
Activity III:
In groups define
the following:
1. The Romantic
movement
2. The Salon
3. Impressionism
4. Impressionist
5. Genre
6. Avant-garde
 The Salon
 The Salon (French: Salon de
Paris), beginning in 1667, was
the official art exhibition of the
Académie des Beaux-Arts in
Paris.
 Between 1748 and 1890 it was
arguably the greatest annual or
biennial(regular) art event in
the Western world.
 Exhibition at the Salon de Paris
was essential for any artist to
achieve success in France for
at least the next 200 years.
Exhibition in the Salon marked
a sign of royal favor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(Paris)
 Impressionists
They represent the
shift from traditional
artists who
established the
techniques and
emphasized training
and composition to
the modernists who
believed that art
should represent a
contemporary
sensibility
(awareness /
emotional response).
 Avant-garde
The term is borrowed from French military vocabulary and
it means an advanced fighting force. It is used to designate
the artists and writers and musicians who developed
modern forms. It is applied to the pioneers of modern forms
such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Arthur Brown, John
Cage, J.G. Ballard, Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges,
Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf
What are the features of impressionist art?
It is characterized by the following:
- Relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes; not
blended smoothly or shaded.
- Compositions done in, or representative of scenes in
open air.
- Emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its
changing qualities [e.g., as in different times of the day,
or of light falling from different angles].
- Inclusion of movement as an element of human
experience.
- Unusual visual angles.
- The aim is overall visual effects instead of providing

details.
 Cézanne’s Reputation
• Published reviews of the
exhibition varied from
moderate support to complete
dismissal.
• Jean Pouvaire, a reviewer,
ridiculed Cézanne by saying:
“shall we mention Cézanne, who,
by the way, has his own legend?
No known jury has ever, even in
its dreams, imagined the
possibility of accepting a single
work by this painter, who came to
the Salon carrying his paintings
on his back, like Jesus Christ
carrying his cross.” (1874, in
Mofat, 1966, p. 126)
 Cézanne’s Reputation
Activity IV:
• Think, Pair, Share:
• What can you see?

Three years later, another reviewer of the

same exhibition praised Cézanne’s work and
compared it to the great classical paintings
calling him “ a great painter” and the “ result of
his enormous skill”
As you can see, the painting traces the light effects
of the rising sun on the surface of the water, in
strong, short brush strokes; and though you would
make out the hazy shapes of at least two boats,
the details of the scene are fused together and we
are left with an overall “impression” of boats sailing
into the sunrise.
 The Genre of Bathers
Activity V:
1. What is meant by the genre of bathers?
2. Give a brief account about its historical
background? (p. 61-62)
 Cézanne’s reputation
The genre of bathers
 Cézanne is known for his series of paintings of bathers .
The genre of bathers goes back to classical Greek and
Romans with some paintings in the late 15th and 16th
centuries. Traditionally, the paintings focused on Venus
or nymphs(maidens of deities) pictured nude in a natural
landscape to stress their timelessness.
 Classical themes were popular in art and added a
respectable gloss to the paintings. They were considered
high art. It allowed the painters to be compared to their
predecessors(ancestors, forefathers). Cézanne, like
other avant-garde, challenged imitating classical
themes.
 Tradition vs. Modernity
Read the following quotation and then comment on it in the light of the
heated debate about Cézanne’s reputation.

“The artist who has been most maligned and misjudged

over the last fifteen years by press and public alike is M.
Cézanne. There is no epithet so vile that it has not been
used to describe him, and his works have been rewarded
with the hysterical laughter that they still hear today.”
(Riviere, 1877, in Harrison et al, 1998, p. 596)

The wide differences of opinion

about his work serve vividly to
demonstrate the gap that had
already grown between
traditional and ‘modern’ views
on art.
 Cézanne’s reputation
The debate about Cézanne
was part of the debate
between traditionalists and
modernists. He was
attacked and ridiculed for 15
years until critics, like Clive
Bell in 1914, wrote that he is
an inspiration and the
Christopher Columbus to the
new movement in art (avant-
garde)
 Terms and Techniques
Work in Groups and
Define the following: (p. 64-65)
1. Delineation
2. Modelling
3. Tone
4. Picture plan
5. Composition
6. Literal surface
7. Brushwork
1. Delineation: refers to the technique of
shapes and details by means of drawing.
2. Modelling: refers to painting that
assumes a direction and fall of light,
normally from the side
3. Tone: is the range from lightest light
(pure white) to darkest dark (pure black).
1. Picture plan: this is a virtual vertical surface that
defines the nearest extent of the picture pace and
includes all that the painting’s spectators is
imagined as seeing.
2. Composition: the techniques and process by
means of which the various elements of a work of
art are organized into a whole.
3. Literal surface: the actual physical surface of
an object (of a painting).
4. Brushwork: the evidence of the means of
application of paint that is left on the literal surface
of a painting. It is one of the factors that most
clearly defines an individual artist’s style and
technique.
 Tradition and Modernity

 Traditionally, in academic practice, the nude meant

large pictures of nymphs or other ancient Greek or
Roman mythological figure(s), in landscape setting.
 The human figures depicted would be modelled after
the relics of ancient Greek and Roman art.
 The artist would do his best to conceal his
craftsmanship by providing an even tone to his colors
and by smoothing his brush strokes so softly that the
viewer would immediately lose trace of the dividing
line between the real world and the world of the
picture plane.
 This is typical of
Bouguereau’s The Two
Bathers.

As you can see, the detail taken

from Bouguereau’s painting is
almost identical with the ancient
Greek statue of Venus.
Compare Cézanne’s Three Bathers to
Bouguereau’s The Two Bathers.

• By contrast, Cézanne’s The Three Bathers depicts,

roughly, three imperfect, yet natural, female figures
evidently “moving” in a very blurred landscape.
Though we can easily make out one tree trunk, and
though its leaves are marked out with strong bush
strokes, we only get an “impression” of what looks
like forest, sky, and moon in the background.
Unlike the detailed beauty and tranquil looks on the
faces of Bouguereau’s two bathers, the female
figures here are hardly given facial features [partial
view]:
 Cézanne’s paintings (The
Bathers)
Why his Bathers’ paintings were severely
criticized?
• His nude paintings were considered a failure
when compared to the older ones, the traditional
ones. He was accused of lack of technical skills
because his women were not beautiful and his
landscape was shallow.
• In fact, Cézanne refused to copy the traditional
nude paintings and wished to produce his own
sense of the scene.
The same can be said of Cézanne’s Les Baigneuses [The
Bathers], the largest and last of his 200 paintings within the
same genre. Here’s a partial view of it:

Read individually the

influence of Cézanne’s
bathers paintings on artists
(pp. 68-70)
 The Modern Nude
Cézanne’s Modern Olympia and Manet’s
Olympia
Compare Cézanne’s Modern Olympia and Manet’s Olympia.
(pp. 70)

Basic difference between the two modern nude paintings

• Cézanne • Manet
• He used a partial look to • The direct gaze of the
avoid direct confrontation. woman was offensive
to the audience.
In defiance of the ‘proper’, classic context of
the traditional nude, Edouard Manet painted
his Olympia in a contemporary setting;
thereby implying immorality both on part of the
figure in the painting and its probable viewer.

Likewise, Cézanne, in accordance with the

avant- garde/modern insistence on “art as
made out of the material of the
present”[Book1, p.69]; imitated Manet but
added himself as “viewer” in his Modern
Olympia:
 The Artists’ Artist

Painting the
Landscape
 Tradition and Modernity:
Painting The Landscape

Traditionally, in painting landscapes, the picture

plane is made transparent: i.e., the artist must
“work to make spectators forget that what is
actually being looked at is a flat surface being
covered with” paint ,“thus the viewer is easily
absorbed in the pictured scene” (p.66/pp.72- 75);
as in Nicholas Poussin’s painting:
 Tradition and
Modernity:
Painting The Landscape
 By contrast, “the guiding principle of
Impressionism was to achieve a kind of realism
in the visual effects of nature and of modern life;
to capture the fleeting appearance either of the
landscape, or of urban or suburban life under
specific conditions of light and atmosphere”
(p.73).
Moreover, as in Cézanne’s painting of Monte
Sainte-Victoire, “the paint never quite ceases to
look like paint, the canvas to appear as canvas,
however compelling the illusion of breadth and
distance may be” (p.75):
 Poussin versus Cézanne

Poussin’s landscape Cézanne landscape

• Traditional • Modern
• The plane is transparent: • The painting looks like
the viewers forget that paint with sharp
they are watching and are contrasting colors of
absorbed in the picture. yellow and deep blue
• He influenced later
painters who had the
conflict/tension between
virtual content and literal
surface.
 Q2. How has Cézanne’s
Activity VI:
Q1. What makes this painting of his native
work so “intense”? Provence landscape
(pp. 75-76) contributed to his reputation?
• One contributory factor in Cézanne’s reputation
was his attachment to his native Provence.
• He wrote to a friend, “When one is born down
there … nothing else means a thing.”
• Although the Impressionism of the 1870s was
largely an art of the city, Cézanne was devoted to
the rural scenery of Provence, which appeared
largely untouched by the social and technological
processes of modernization.
• There’s one particular feature of the
Provencal landscape that appears in over
thirty of Cézanne’s paintings. This is Mount
Sainte-Victoria.
• These paintings were divided into two groups.
• The distinctive shape of the mountain
appears in some 20 oil paintings from the
1880s.
• It’s also the dominant motif in 11 canvases
and a number of watercolors from 1901 to
1906.
 A Still Life and Its Value
Activity VII:
Look at these works of art and compare

Cézanne Jacob van Hulsdonck

• Still Life emerged as a fully independent type of
subject for painting around 1600
• It was common for still-life pictures to be
designed as allegories: collections of objects
and motifs that could be read symbolically.
• The most common allegories were those that
encouraged philosophical reflection on human
mortality and material possessions and sensory
pleasures.
• A painting of this type is referred to as a ‘Vanitas’
after a verse from one of the biblical books.
 The most easily interpreted Vanitas are those
featuring objects that have clear association with
the passage of time and with death.
 These works are referred to by the Latin tag
memento mori, ‘remember that you must die.’

Activity VIII:
By Harmen Steenwyck

What do you see? What is the

implication of each item you
see?
It includes:
- A skull
- An empty shell
- A watch
- An extinguished and smoking taper
- Lute placed face down (possibly implying the
silencing of music)
- The trumpet may refer to the worthlessness of
worldly fame
- The Japanese sword may refer to military
power
Differently, yet in similar vein, in Jacob van Hulsdonck’s still life
painting, the bright fresh fruits will, for a fact, rot and decay, and
the expensive porcelain bowl will eventually break.

In Cézanne’s Still Life, Curtain, Jug, and Compotier, the picture

does not “appear to stage a way of life other than the one from
which the painting itself must have emerged. Rather, the very
lack of potential of symbolic reading requires us to concentrate
more closely on the distinctive qualities of the composition and
the technique” (p. 80)
 Still Life Paintings
• Traditional Still Life • Cézanne’s Still Life
paintings aimed at paintings:
giving a moral lesson This is an example of his
that every thing will pure forms. He is attentive
decay and die. to the details of the size and
colour of the fruits.
• There were more than
The painting of Still Life,
1600 paintings
Curtain, Jug, and
produced in this genre. Compotier, is supposed to
• These paintings are be a source of pleasure to
used as allegory its viewers.
(symbolic) of the This painting was recently
emptiness of material sold for 60.5 million dollars.
life.
 The tension between the scholars
and the owners
• The scholars are those who had knowledge because of their
education, culture and heredity while the owners were the
newly emerging class who had the property.
• This tension created the debate whether the work of art is
valued for its aesthetic(artistic)quality or it should be regarded
as a commodity.
• Cézanne whose father was an owner, adopted the view of the
scholar and resisted the market values and the traditional
artists limitations.
Cézanne’s work appeared in the middle of the
social conflict related to what defined membership
in the dominant class of the bourgeoisie; and by
consequence, what defined the status of high art:
should it be defined by the classic tastes of the
“scholars”, the residue(remainder) of the almost
extinct aristocrats who inherited the knowledge of
art and culture? Or should it be defined by the
tastes of the “owners”, those hardworking,
“uncultured” men who joined the bourgeoisie
through industry and property ownership?
Despite being the son of an “owner”, Cézanne
maintained a “scholarly” ambition, “while
continuing to challenge accepted notions of what a
“cultured” and professionally produced picture
should look like” (p.83).
Apart from the fact, then, that the Impressionists’
work, including Cézanne’s, is representative of the
transition from Tradition to Modernity; Cézanne’s
work was the most advanced of the avant-garde
with his extreme impartiality, lack of sentiment,
and his attempts to depict “pure forms” in his
paintings.