Cézanne [antikvár]

IntroductionThere is a photograph of Paul Cézanne taken by Emile Bernard in February 1904. It shows an aging man of sixty-five with a lively face, a long nose ending in a bushy white moustache and a white beard which hides his chin. A few wisps of white hair stick out from under a square-crowned hat, and he is dressed in a long travelhng coat which falls to below his knees. There is nothing in his appearance to distinguish him from any other middle-class citizen of Aix-en-Provence, and yet it is this thin, unremarkable old man who laid the foundations of modern painting, this very ordinary middle-class Frenchman who, in his time, was the most revolutionary of painters.The family into which he was born, his education and the social environment in which he was brought up all contributed to make him a typical member ofthe French provincial middle class. His ancestors had come to Briançon in the seventeenth century from Cesana, a small village on the Italian side of the Alps at the foot of Mount Genevre, and although many of Cézanne's biographers attribute French linguistic and ethnic origins to the family, he himself was always quick to acknowledge his transalpine ancestry, and 1 think that certain traits in his character can be better explained if we recognize a Piedmontese descent.The Cézanne family made little financial headway at Briançon, and they soon had to leave the village. Since the family was a large one, it is difficult to trace their movements, but we do know that in 1650 there was a Blaise Cézanne who was a shoemaker by profession and that a Denis Cézanne settled in Aix-en-Provence in about 1700. He had many