Cezanne [antikvár]

Introduction Paui. cézanm': Seif-ponrail (detail) c 1872, iMusée d'Orsay, Paris Paul Cézanne's early years appear at first sight to conform almost too easily to the popular mythology of the struggling and misunderstood painter. He fought against the conventional aspirations of his family, escaped to join the bohemian artistic ch-cles of Paris, suffered the hidignlty of rejection from public exhibitions, and worked doggedly at his painting for many years before tasting any kind of success. There is, however, evidence that Cézanne cultivated this view of himself, flaunting his long hair and abrasive manners in polite society and deliberately submitting violent or erotic pictures to exhibition juries. He could be abrupt and temperamental even with close friends, was savage in his denunciation of critics and cultural bureaucrats, and his commitment to his own art was never less than fierce. There have been few artists as dedicated as Cézanne, but also few whose formative years were so problematic and imexpected. Early years Paul Cézanne was born in 1839, and his adolescence and early manhood appear to have been dominated by his father, Louis-Auguste Cézanne, a self-made businessman and banker from Aix-en-Provence in southern France. Paid showed considerable aptitude at school, and was destined to follow in his father's footsteps. As a schoolboy, however, he preferred to roam the countryside with his small band of close friends (one of whom was Emile Zola, the future novelist) talking of art and reading aloud their own and others' poetry. At the age of nineteen, Cézanne started to study at the local drawing academy, where he learned to produce highly disciplined, if rather conventional, studies from the nude male model. Braving his father's wrath, he announced that he wanted to leave Aix for Paris and embark on a career as an artist. Cézanne senior was accustomed to getting his own way, but on this occasion he met his match. In 1861, after bitter arguments, Paul was provided with a meagre allowance and allowed to travel to the capital. Despite the pleasure of meeting up again with his friend Zola, who had preceded him to Paris, the young man experienced a number of setbacks, and more than once had to return to his family home. But the decisive break had been made, and throughout the 1860s, Cézanne worked at his vocation, drawing from models, studying the masters of the past in the Louvre and gradually making the acquaintance of other unknown young artists, such as Camille Pissarro and Armand GuUlaumin. His growing self-confidence is reflected in his few surviving letters from this period and in the record of his several submissions to the official Salon. The character of the pictures he sent in, several of which siuTive, helps both to explain their rejection by the Salon jiu-ies and to summarize something of the young artist's ambitions. The large portrait of 1870 AchilleEmperaire (see page 19), was not only rejected by the jury of that year, but also lampooned in a contemporary illustration. Emperaire was a lifelong friend of Cézanne's, a fellow painter from Aix, who suffered from a serious condition that left his legs under-developed and feeble. As in his portrait of his father shown opposite Cézanne he has presented Emperaire vrith extraordinary boldness, almost defying the spectator to turn away from the luilovely creature who completely dominates the large canvas. Another picture from the same period. The Murder, shows Cézanne at his most defiant, wilfully distorting the limbs of his figures, and bending the contours of the landscape to accommodate the ferocity of the scene. The paint is thickly applied, the implicit emotion raw and impulsive, as if the artist were giving direct expression to his own passionate temperament. The idea that an artist's principal function is to express his temperament through his chosen medium seems to have been an article of faith for both Cézanne