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| Wednesday, 21 January 2004 |
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The classical art of Cezanne by Gwen Herat Above all French impressionists, Cezanne stood out as the icon of landscape painting. He still remains one of the world's greatest painters of nature. He wallowed in all hues of green and blue to capture nature into canvas. Cezanne was a born 'naturalist' and saw nature differently from many of his colleagues. While he excelled in nature, Cezanne was also great at portraiture and anything else that caught his imagination. Ask any artist who his favourite nature painter is and pat will come the answer, Cezanne.
I can identify Cezanne from a long distance more than any other painter because of his own signature in the art. His brilliant brush strokes and very steady in his hand, produced marvels. He used as much as three hues of green in a single stroke which no other artist could have done. At least, I have not come across any other who has achieved it. And Cezanne happens to be one great artist whose works are still exhibited around the world. Paul Cezanne (1838-1906) was born at a time classical painting was being deeply appreciated in France. He was one of the splendid and equally spectacular painters of his generation, his colleagues being Manet, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Degas and Renoire. The epithet of impressionist was attached widely and recklessly for no obvious artistic reason during the last quarter of the 19th century and few years of the 20th century. The word 'impressionist' was also applied to other forms of art such as music and dancing. It was applied in places that had no business. The music of Debussy came under the spell of impressionist and worse, it even came into drama and prose until the French got sick of it. This resulted in the impressionist group of painters being associated with groups such as poets, novelists, journalists, playwrights, actors and musicians. In fairness to Degas and Cezanne, they broke away from the system. They hardly painted impressionist pictures while Manet was the chief painter to have been influenced by the impressionist school. Guidance Cezanne hardly painted a scientific picture because during the all important period of 1871-1877 he worked under the guidance of his colleague Pissarro and the paintings done by these two artists later, had a semblance to each others work. Since nature was his forte, Cezanne's perception unified everything.
From the beginning the difference between Cezanne and the rest of the impressionist painters were manifest with the doctrine and technique used by him to elaborate whereas the rest became impressionist masters. He gave proof of talent and painted good pictures but he was little more than temperament and had a shocking pictorial past to live down. On many occasions he was found to be dispassionate over his own capabilities. He had been a fiery but feeble young poet far from becoming a painter but highly influenced by Delacroix and Coubert (about whom I have written earlier) he dropped the idea of becoming an inventor of 'plastic equalents'. Far from recording visual sensations, he had made up his mind to write tragedies and satire in paint but these results were not encouraging and no one recognized his works. Cezanne was not to be disappointed. He started looking at nature more closely as he recognized its potential, its beauty and the glories of nature. He saw it from his window, from a moving train and from his backyard. Yet Cezanne was already dreaming of making impressionism a durable 'comme'. That dream came true when the classical period around 1882 began in the serene years of calm. During these years he was to paint some of the supreme triumphs of modern painting. He became a cross between the old and new schools of art. He had worked hard. It was said that he would paint nature rising at dawn and well into dusk, trapping the colour in between, that of the morning sun as well as the fading sun. Challenges By now Cezanne had arrived gloriously on the scene. By now he had explored all possibilities in the world of art. He was wise to its challenges of moving time and adjusted accordingly. He was second to no one but a master unto himself. The open mindedness and taste for more and more experiment made Cezanne the artist he had dreamed of becoming. However, many people are bound to get confused over certain paintings by Cezanne and Pissarro none of whom imitated the other. One good example is the painting Le clos de mathurins which both painted under the same title and almost simultaneously and the subject viewed from different angles is the same in both paintings although Cezanne differed slightly with a mathematically demonstrated brush work along with a severely architectural synthesis. Cezanne also had brush work in austere to the verge of abstraction, something I have noticed clearly in the paintings of Picasso. Some of Cezanne's paintings in the Impressionist era are-: Self Portrait 1880 at the Moscow Museum of Western Art. Size - 18 3/4 x 15; Poplars 1880-2 at the Paris, Louvre. Size-25 1/4 x 31 1/2, The Bay of Marsseilles 1883 (Location unknown) Size - 25 1/2 x 31 1/4, Still Life With Fruit Basket 1886 at Paris Louvre. Size - 25 1/2 x 33 1/4; Bridge Over the Marne 1893 at The Moscow Museum of Western Art; The Arc Valley 1887 Nantes, Private Collectio. Size - 31 3/4 x 25 1/4; Italian Girl 1896 New York, Collection of H. Bakwin. Size - 36 1/2 x 28 3/4 and Old Woman with Rosary 1898 in London, National Gallery. Size - 33 1/2 x 25 1/4. **** Back **** |
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