Paul Cézanne, the great hermit painter
Introduction
Paul Cézanne was a French painter, whom many consider pioneer of open brushstrokes characteristics of post-impressionism. His work formed a bridge between the impressionism of the late nineteenth century and the new line of artistic research of the early twentieth century, Cubism. The domain of design, tone, composition and color that covers your work is very characteristic. His way of painting is unique, and can be easily recognized worldwide. Both Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso were very 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 gave the painter a financial security that was not available for most contemporaries. At the end of his life, the family business would read the painter a great inheritance. He attended primary school along with his younger sisters, Marie and Rose. Then, he continued his studies at Saint Joseph school in Aix. In 1852, Paul Cézanne entered Collège Bourbon, where he met and became friends with Émile Zola. This friendship was decisive for the two men: with youth romanticism, they imagined successful careers in the flourishing artistic industry of Paris: 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 (Design School) in Aix in 1856. His father opposed his artistic career. In 1858 his father convinced him to enter the Law Faculty of the University of Aix-en-Provence. Cézanne continued his law studies for several years. However, he enrolled simultaneously in the École des Beaux-Arts in Aix, where he remained until 1861. In 1862, after a series of bitter family disputes, the candidate for artist received a small assignment and was sent to study art in Paris. Had planned to move with Zola. He appeared before L’école des Beaux-Arts from Paris. However, your application was rejected. For that reason he began his artistic studies at the academic suisse.
THE CIRCLE OF ARTISTS
The academic suisse was a study where young art students could work with live models for a very modest monthly fee. There, Cézanne met painters like Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir. His painting at this time was in a vein of unbridled and rude romanticism. In his pictures of the moment, Cézanne showed a predilection for the issues of violence or eroticism. He was completely different from his mature work and that he would consecrate him as a painter. All young people from the academic suisse at that time were also artists with difficulties. Soon, they would be part of the founding members of the nascent impressionist movement. Although Cézanne had inspired the visits to the Louvre, in particular when studying Diego Velázquez and Caravaggio, he doubted his vocation after five months in Paris. He decided to return to Aix, and entered his father’s bank, although he continued studying at the design school. In 1869 he met Hortense Fiquet, a model and seamstress, who became his lover and gave him a son, Paul, in 1872. Paul Cézanne kept them secret from his family;He was terrified of the reaction of his dominant father.
Finally he married Hortense in 1886, shortly before his father’s death. In 1886, Cézanne got angry about what he interpreted as slightly disguised references of his own failures in one of Zola’s novels. As a result, he broke relations with his oldest supporter. Cézanne in Aix, the years of greatest production in the same year, inherited the richness of his father and finally, at the age of 47, became financially independent, but socially remained isolated. After his father’s death, he inherited the family farm "The Jas de Bouffan". "The world does not understand me and I do not understand the world, that’s why I have retired from it" – Paul Cézannela Finca appears in many of his paintings, and from that moment Cézanne lived mainly in Aix. He devoted himself mainly to certain favorite themes: portraits of his wife Hortense, lifting nature and, above all, the landscape of the province, especially Mount Ste-Victoire. Cézanne was interested in the underlying structure. Thus, their paintings rarely give an obvious indication of the time of day or even the season represented. His posterior paintings are generally more compound and open, impregnated with a feeling of air and light. The third dimension is created through perspective or shortening, but through extraordinarily subtle tone variations. In 1872 he settled in Auvers Sur-Oise, near Pontoise, the home of Camille Pissarro. There, Cézanne started a long and fruitful association with Pissarro. In the last year of his life he still described himself as a ‘pissing student’.
Color and light in their paintings
Many of Cézanne’s first works were painted in dark tones applied with heavy pigments and fluids. In this way the influence of romantic and capricious expressionism of previous generations followed. Under the tutela de pissarro, and in a very short time for 1872-73, Cézanne changed dark tones to bright tones. In addition, he began to concentrate on cultivation land scenes and rural villages. Presented with the impressionists in 1874 and again in 1877. However, Cézanne never identified with the Impressionist group or totally adopted its objectives and techniques. Cézanne was more interested in the structural analysis of nature. He toured a lonely and difficult path towards his goal of an art that did not superficially attract the eye but to the mind. This art would combine the best of the French classical tradition of structure with the best of contemporary realism. His work was practically unknown throughout his life. In 1895, Ambroise Vollard, an ambitious art merchant from Paris, organized a sample of Cézanne’s works and during the next few years he promoted them successfully. At the time of his death, in 1906, Cézanne had reached the status of legendary figure.
Legacy
When observing Cézanne’s late work, it is impossible to overlook the emergence of a unique artistic approach. Cézanne offered a new way of understanding the world through art.’For an impressionist painting from nature it is not to paint the subject, but to make sensations’ – Paul Cézanne with his reputation in constant evolution in the last 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 to a new completely new and unprecedented direction. It was Cézanne who taught the new generation of artists to release the shape of color in her art. Thus, they created a new and subjective pictorial reality, not simply a servile imitation.
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