Ézanne Essay, Research Paper
Paul Cézanne, who was the son
of a wealthy banker, became a painter in the 1860s in Paris when he quit his
studies of Law. By 1874 he was painting landscapes in the Impressionist manner
and had some of his work included in their first exhibition held during that
very same year. He painted in the
Impressionistic manner, but sheared off in a different direction to the main
body of Impressionist painters. The main body of Impressionist painters were
concerned with the ‘fleeting effects of light and colour’, and in order to
capture the surface impression of that moment ‘they had to work fluently and
quickly’. CÉzanne’s analysis was far more prolonged and pains taking; he spent
so long analysing his subjects that some of his work was never finished. He began to be more concerned
with the use of colour in modelling objects and landscape and as a way of
expressing their underlying form. The basic ideas of Cubism have been claimed
to be present in his philosophy. His theory was that the painter could always
find the cone, the sphere and the cylinder in Nature, and that all natural
shapes were composed of these shapes at their most basic form. CÉzanne inherited sufficient
wealth to live in rich seclusion in Provence near Aix. He needed this solitude
or he found it difficult getting on with others: being naturally ill at ease,
neurotically sensitive and suffering from outbursts of temper. His great contribution to art
was to make Impressionism solid: to restore the careful analysis of form and
structure that pervaded the old masters but to combine this with an intensity
of colour and harmony, full of personal expression. In his landscapes he showed
a deep feeling for the force of nature in each sweeping line and chopping
stroke of the brush, in the intense orange earth against the clear Provence
skies. Always dissatisfied with his
efforts, CÉzanne struggled unceasingly to reveal the truths of nature. He made
many landscape paintings of the area where he lived and through them he
achieved great success even in his old age. Many of these landscapes like
"Route-Tournante" pulse and glow with his free and painstaking
analysis. Part of the vitality of this picture lies in the loose and patchy
technique The effect is particularly striking in the subtle greens of the trees
and the subtle earth tones. Part of the interest of lies in the balance he
creates between the abstract and the real. The forms of foliage, rocks and road
are so simplified and generalised that they appear almost abstract. But as they
dissolve into tonal mark
the way the road twists out of sight past the rocks into a cool tree-filled
valley. His way of working is so
explicit; as we look at the surface of the picture we are aware of his every
brush mark, and we can imagine his subtle colour mixing and careful balancing
of colour and tone. He used colour not to fill in outlines, but, as a true
colourist used it to create forms. He believed that colour and line were
inseparable and interwove them, applying one over the other in his work. His
angled brush strokes set up a nervous sense of agitation in his late works like
"Route Tournante". This may be a combination of his irascible
temperament with an ageing painter’s awareness of the need to realise his
objectives while he still had time. CÉzanne was a great painter of
the immediate landscape of Provence around his home, often painting the view
seen from his studio. The quality of this landscape – the light, the colour of
the earth, the roll of the hills affects the way the artist reacts to it. Many
artists who work from landscape begin to identify with feelings that the
physical area arouses. One can argue that we are all affected by the physical
nature of the area where we live. In this sense was similar to many other
landscape artists, many of who have come to be associated with the place; Lowry
with the industrial North of England, Constable with Suffolk and Gauguin with
the South Seas. Since CÉzanne was interested in
nature, Paul went to the South of France. The way in which he painted light
inspired younger artists, such as Henri Matisse and Andre Derain, who searched
for similar ways to express themselves. In an abandoned quarry near
Aix-en-Provence, studied the huge, jagged rocks, and made this dramatic
composition, called Bibemus Quarry by contrasting sizes, shapes, and angles. The painting is a circular
composition. This is achieved by arranging rock shapes in a pattern. CÉzanne
has framed the painting using rocks. Large stones on the left and right guide
our eyes into the painting. The horizontal shelf in the middle leans towards a
wedge-shaped outcrop that sweeps upward. Soft green plants creep up the slope
to a tree on the horizon. The diagonal trunk of a tree cut off by the edge of
the painting takes us back along sharply tilted pocks to the middle of the
painting. Every stroke of his brush makes
the rocks look solid. He painted patches of red, brown, orange, and grey
side-by-side and created ‘weightless clouds’ in the hazy-looking sky with short
brushstrokes, in many shades of green and blue.