"Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from Bibemus," circa 1897,
records the majesty of the great Aixois mountain from one of
Cezanne's favorite painting sites. Museum Folkwang, Essen.
A turning point came in the 1870s, when his friend, the
Impressionist artist Pissarro, encouraged him to paint outdoors
using a brighter palette and incorporating the effects of light.
Cezanne's newly vibrant canvases moved in the direction of the
Impressionists, but he continued to search for his own style.
In the early 1880s, Cezanne took refuge at Jas de Bouffan, the
family's late Seventeenth Century provincial-style farmhouse
estate in Aix, where he labored at his art while becoming
increasingly withdrawn, eccentric and embittered by his lack of
success. He worked diligently to reduce natural objects to their
basic forms, to represent volume and modeling by the manipulation
of color, without the use of shadows or perspective, and to
achieve pictorial unity when combining flat and three-dimensional
effects in the same composition. It was a tough struggle,
requiring tenacity and perseverance in the face of repeated
rebuffs.
His paintings of Jas de Bouffan record its red roof and the
chestnut trees that continue to grace the estate. This year, the
house and grounds are open to the public.
A favorite painting site was the nearby harbor town of L'Estaque,
squeezed between mountains and sea. "The Gulf of Marseille Seen
from L'Estaque," circa 1885, offers a geometrical arrangement of
sober, Nineteenth Century red-roofed houses set against an
expanse of blue water, with Marseille and the mountains in the
distance. It combines a feel for the peace and grandeur of the
Mediterranean and the sturdy structures that abut it.
Painted in his studio at Jas de Bouffan, Cezanne's strikingly
simplified "Cardplayers," 1890-99, shows two laborers engaged
in a silent confrontation over a game of cards. Musee d'Orsay,
Paris, Bequest of Comte Isaac de Camondo.
Cezanne painted a number of bathers - male and female, nude
or seminude. "Bather with Outstretched Arms," 1877-78, perhaps
inspired by the artist's teenage son, shows a lad maintaining his
balance on a rocky shore. The artist's three versions of "The Large
Bathers," highlighted by one painted in 1894-1905, from the
National Gallery in London, feature groups of distorted, arbitrary
nude females in an idiosyncratic composition. "Collectively [they]
represent his ultimate contribution to the European grand manner in
figure painting," says Consisbee.
Cezanne's depictions of stolid, rustic men playing cards and his
colorful, tightly composed still lifes are memorable examples of
Cezanne's ability to endow the homeliest subjects with palpable
dignity.
"The Artist's Father, Reading L'Evenement," 1866, is a
vigorously executed likeness of his powerful, overbearing parent
perusing a leftist newspaper he would not have normally read -
but which had published a favorable review by Zola of his boyhood
friend's work. While his father had his doubts about his son's
prospects as a painter, he provided an allowance that enabled
Cezanne to pursue his dream.
In Cezanne's compelling portraits of his long-suffering wife, she
looks placidly, or with an air of boredom, at the viewer. "Madam
Cezanne in the Conservatory," 1891-92, is endowed, in curator
Coutagne's words, "with powerful integrity, capturing the spirit
of this rather majestic woman, with her serene oval face."
Cezanne, shown here in a photograph at Les Lauves early in
1906, painted to the very end of his life. Photo by Kerr-Xavier
Rousel. National Gallery of Art Gallery Archives, Rewald
Papers.
Cezanne literally reached his peak in a series of paintings
of Montagne Saint-Victoire, the giant limestone mountain dominating
the Aixois countryside, works "dense in matter, rich in
chiaroscuro, vibrant in color, passionate in feeling and which
endure in Cezanne's signature motif," in curator Consisbee's
description. Whether depicted from the Bibemus quarry or from
Montbriand or the Chateau Noir or his carefully sited studio, Les
Lauves, the awesome, simple form of the whitened conical summit
majestically rises to the sky above a wide, intensely colored
valley dotted with stuccoed houses and farm buildings with
red-tiled roofs.
Following the death of his parents and the sale of the family
estate in 1901-02, Cezanne designed and had built a large studio
on a hill in Les Lauves, just north of Aix. The site commanded
views of Montagne Saint-Victoire and boasted a garden that the
painter depicted in a fascinating, primarily abstract canvas of
color patches. Painted around 1906, "The Garden at Les Lauves" is
in The Phillips Collection. The studio is highly evocative;
visitors today can see painting gear and props he used in the
famed still lifes and views of bathers that culminated his
career.
Isolated in Aix for the last decades of his life and obsessed
with his artistic struggles, Cezanne grew increasingly resentful
of intrusions on his privacy and embittered by lack of
recognition for his achievements. General appreciation did not
come until 1890s solo exhibitions at Ambroise Vollard's gallery
in Paris. A memorial exhibition in 1907, the Armory Show of 1913
and numerous exhibitions since then have solidified his high
standing.
Impelled by a consuming sense of his own inadequacy, of his
failure to achieve his artistic goals, Cezanne labored zealously
to the end. In the fall of 1906, he collapsed while working
outdoors in a cold rain and died a week later. Prophetically, he
had vowed "to die painting."
Deeply committed to his home region, Cezanne reveled in
depicting its venerable houses and villages, as in "Houses in
Provence: The Riaux Valley near L'Estaque," circa 1883.
National Gallery of Art, Collection of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon.
He had spent most of his career searching for an elusive
goal: a perfect balance between nature and art. A deeply troubled
man who sought to free himself from personal demons through
painting, for Cezanne, success came too little and too late. He
surely would feel vindicated that "Cezanne 2006" events all over
France and especially in Aix-en-Provence will commemorate his
lasting contributions to world art. His family home, Jas de
Bouffan, and his Les Lauves studio will be open to the public, as
will the newly renovated Musee Granet, a major regional museum.
More than most artists, Cezanne's work needs to be viewed in
person in order to appreciate his color and forms and overall
approach to painting. "Cezanne in Provence" demonstrates how he
applied his innovative style and used perspective and composition
to immortalize his native region. In so doing, he changed forever
the way painters approach a canvas. Cezanne made it possible for
modern artists from Picasso and Matisse to Pollock and Warhol to
follow their own muses.
The 350-page catalog, chockfull of color reproductions and
vintage photographs, is a beauty. It contains valuable essays by
Consisbee, Bruno Ely, Benedict Leca and Paul Smith, and entries
about each work in the exhibition by Consisbee, Coutagne and
others. A chronology, bibliography and map add to this
well-rounded publication. Produced by the National Gallery and
published in association with Yale University Press, the catalog
sells for $60 hardcover and $40 softcover.
A full program of lectures, tours and concerts accompany the
show. The National Gallery of Art is on the National Mall between
3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW. For information,
202-737-4215 or www.nga.gov.
