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"I owe you the truth in painting and I will tell it to you"

SYNOPSIS

Paul Cezanne was the preeminent French artist of the Post-Impressionist era, widely appreciated toward the end of his life for insisting that painting stay in touch with its material, if not virtually sculptural origins. Also known as the "Master of Aix" after his ancestral home in the South of France, Cezanne is credited with paving the way for the emergence of modern art, both visually and conceptually. In retrospect, his work constitutes the most powerful and essential link between the ephemeral aspects of Impressionism and the more materialist, early 20th century artistic movements of Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, and even complete abstraction.

KEY IDEAS

Cezanne ultimately came to regard color, line, and "form" as constituting one and the same thing, or inseparable aspects for describing how the human eye actually experiences Nature.
Unsatisfied with the Impressionist dictum that painting is primarily a reflection of visual perception, Cezanne sought to make of his artistic practice a new kind of analytical discipline. In his hands, the canvas itself takes on the role of a screen where an artist's visual sensations are registered as he gazes intensely, and often repeatedly, at a given subject.
Cezanne applied his pigments to the canvas in a series of discrete, methodical brushstrokes, indeed as though he were "constructing" a picture rather than "painting" it, thus remaining true to an underlying architectural ideal: every portion of the canvas should contribute to its overall structural integrity.
In Cezanne's mature pictures, even a simple apple might display a distinctly sculptural dimension. It is as if each item of still life, landscape, or portrait had been examined not from one but several or more angles, its material properties then recombined by the artist as no mere copy, but as what Cezanne called "a harmony parallel to nature." It was this aspect of Cezanne's analytical, time-based practice that led the future Cubists to regard him their true mentor.
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ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Childhood

Paul Cezanne was born on January 19, 1839 in Aix-en-Provence in the South of France. His father was a wealthy lawyer and banker who strongly encouraged Paul to follow in his footsteps. Cezanne's eventual rejection of his authoritative father's aspirations led to a long problematic relationship between the two, although, notably, the artist remained financially dependent on his family until his father's death in 1886.

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Early training

Cezanne was largely a self-taught artist. In 1859 he attended evening drawing classes in his native town of Aix. After moving to Paris in 1861, Cezanne twice attempted to enter the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, but was turned down by the jury. Instead of acquiring professional training, Cezanne made frequent visits to the Musee de Louvre, where he copied works by Titian, Rubens, and Michelangelo. He was also regularly visited the Academie Suisse, a studio where young art students could draw from the live model for a very modest monthly membership fee. While at the Academie, Cezanne met fellow painters Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, and Auguste Renoir, who were at that time also struggling artists, but who would soon comprise the founding members of the nascent Impressionist movement.

The early oils of Cezanne were executed in a rather somber palette. The paint was often applied in thick layers of impasto, adding a sense of heaviness to already solemn compositions. Cezanne's early painting indicated a focus on color in favor of well-delineated silhouettes and perspectives preferred by the French Academy and the jury of the annual Salon

While in Paris, Cezanne continuously submitted his works for exhibition at the Salon. All of his submissions, however, were refused. The artist also travelled regularly back to Aix to secure funding from his disapproving father.

The year 1870 marked a crucial shift in Cezanne's painting, which was occasioned by two factors: the artist's move to L'Estaque in the South of France to avoid the military draft, and his closer association with one of the most distinguished young Impressionists - Camille Pissarro. Cezanne was fascinated with the Mediterranean landscape of L'Estaque with its abundance of sunlight and the vibrancy of colors. Pissarro proved instrumental in persuading Cezanne to adopt a brighter palette, as well as to abandon the heavy and ponderous impasto technique in favor of smaller and livelier brushstrokes. In L'Estaque, Cezanne executed a series of landscapes dominated by the architectonic forms of the rural houses, the dazzling blues of the sea, and the vivacious greens of the foliage.

In 1872 Cezanne returned to Paris where his son Paul was born. His mistress, Hortense Fiquet, would finally become Madame Cezanne in 1886, notably following the artist's father's death. Cezanne painted over forty portraits of his companion, as well as several enigmatic portraits of their son, Paul.

In 1873 Cezanne exhibited in the Salon des Refuses, the notorious show of artists who had been refused by the official Salon (Cezanne could count himself among a circle including Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissarro, among others). The critics slammed the avant-garde artists, which apparently hurt Cezanne deeply. In the next decade he mostly painted away from Paris, in either Aix or L'Estaque, and he no longer participated in unofficial group exhibitions.

Mature Period

Cezanne's experience with painting from nature led him to develop his own theory of art. He strove to depart from the portrayal of the transient moment, long favored by the Impressionists; instead, Cezanne sought true and permanent pictorial qualities of objects around him. According to Cezanne, the subject of the painting was first to be "read" by the artist through the understanding of its essence. Then, in the second stage, this essence must be "realized" on a canvas through forms, colors, and their spatial relations. The colors and forms thus became the dominant elements of his compositions, completely freed from the rigid rules of perspective and paint application as promoted by the Academy.

Depicting reality as such was never Cezanne's primary objective. In his own words, it was "something other than reality" that he endeavored to reveal.

In Cezanne's mature work the colors and forms possessed equal pictorial weight. The primary means of constructing the new perspective included the juxtaposition of cool and warm colors as well as the bold overlapping of forms. The light was no longer an "outsider" in relation to depicted objects; rather, light emanated from within. Instead of the illusion, he searched for the essence. Instead of the three-dimensional artifice, he longed for the two-dimensional truth.

These principles of painting were also applied to still lifes and portraits. In the 1880's, Cezanne executed a large number of still lifes, completely reinventing the genre in the two-dimensional mode. The central feature of these still lifes was the crucial shift of attention from the objects themselves, to the forms and colors that were potentially communicated by their surfaces and contours. This radical liberation of form and color from their carrier, the object itself, directly precipitated the basic principles of Cubism, Expressionism, and later experimentations with various degrees of abstraction.

Cezanne's portraits, including an extensive body of self-portraits, exhibit the same set of traits. The compositions are vividly impersonal, for it was not the sitter's character that Cezanne struggled to depict but the formal and coloristic possibilities of the human body and its interior nature.

Late Period and Death

In the last decade of his life, Cezanne limited his artistic pursuits almost exclusively to two pictorial motifs. One was the depiction of the Mont Sainte-Victoire, a dramatic mountain that dominated the parched and stony landscape at Aix. The other was the final synthesis of nature and the human body in a series of so-called Bathers (nudes depicted frolicking in a landscape). The latest of the Bathers were becoming increasingly abstract in regard to how form and color seemed to fuse together on the canvas.

After contracting pneumonia, Paul Cezanne died in his familial house in Aix on October 22, 1906. The last decade of his life had been marred by the development of diabetes and severe depression, which contributed toward alienating the artist from most of his friends and family.

LEGACY

When looking at Cezanne's late work, it is impossible to miss the emergence of a unique artistic approach. The rules of the Academy completely abandoned, and the aesthetics of Impressionism having been successfully employed but not copied, Cezanne offered a new way of comprehending the world through art. With his reputation evolving steadily in the late years of his life, an increasing number of young artists fell under the influence of his innovative vision. Among them was the young Pablo Picasso, who would soon steer the Western tradition of painting into yet another new and utterly unprecedented direction. It was Paul Cezanne who taught the new generation of artists to liberate form from color in their art, thus creating a new and subjective pictorial reality, not merely a slavish imitation. The influence of Cezanne continued well into the 1930s and 1940s when a new artistic manner was coming to fruition - that of Abstract Expressionism.

Original content written by Ivan Savvine
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ARTIST QUOTES

"We must not paint what we think we see, but what we see .. sometimes it may go against the grain, but this is what our craft demands."

"You must think. The eye is not enough; it needs to think as well."

"I try to render perspective through color alone .. One must see one's model correctly and experience it in the right way, and furthermore, express oneself with distinction and strength."

"There must not be a single loose strand, a single gap through which the tension, the light, the truth can escape."

"A painter is revealing something which no one has ever seen before and translates it into the absolute concepts of painting. That is, into something other than reality."

"I owe you the truth in painting and I will tell it to you"
[Cezanne writing to the French artist Emile Bernard; letter dated October 23, 1905.]

Paul Cézanne

INFLUENCES

Interactive chart with Paul Cézanne's main influencers, and the people and ideas that the artist influenced in turn.

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Eugène Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix was a mid-19th-century French painter and pioneer of European Modernist painting. Known primarily as a Romantic, Delacroix's paintings were passionate in their depictions of love, war and human sensuality, earning the artist both praise and controversy in his time. His preoccupation with color-induced optical effects and use of expressive brushstrokes were crucial influences on Impressionism and Pointillism.

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Theodore Gericault

Theodore Gericault was a French painter and lithographer during the early 19th century. Heavily influenced by the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens and the Baroque paintings of Velasquez, Gericault became a pioneer in the Romantic period of French painting.

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Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet was a French painter and chief figure in the Realist movement of the mid-19th century. His paintings often contained an emotional bleakness, and were praised for their precision and use of light. Along with Delacroix, Courbet was a key influence on the Impressionists.

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Edouard Manet

Edouard Manet was a French painter and a prominent figure in the mid-19th-century Realist movement of French art. Manet's paintings are considered among the first works of art in the modern era, due to his rough painting style and absence of idealism in his figures. Manet was a close friend of and major influence on younger artists who founded Impressionism such as Monet, Degas and Renoir.

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Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painter. Known as the "Father of Impressionism," he used his own painterly style to depict urban daily life, landscapes, and rural scenes.

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Ambroise Vollard

Ambroise Vollard was an important dealer, collector, and arts patron in late nineteenth-centry and early twentieth-century Paris. His interests were diverse, spanning Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, and modernism, and included such artists as Renoir, Cézanne, Gaugin, Matisse, and Picasso.

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Victor Chocquet

Victor Chocquet was a French art collector and patron in the late 19th century. After visiting a show of Impressionist paintings in 1875, Chocquet commissioned paintings by Renoir and Cézanne, among others, and in the process became very wealthy through his large collections of Impressionist works.

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Julien 'Pere' Tanguy

Julien 'Pere' Tanguy was a French color grinder and salesman of prints and art supplies. Tanguy associated with many of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, and was the chief supplier for artists such as Monet and Sisley, and a close friend of Vincent van Gogh.

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Emile Zola

Emile Zola was a 19th-century French novelist, playwright, essayist and political activist. He was also the self-proclaimed leader of literary French naturalism. As one of the leading cultural figures in France, Zola was close with the likes of Manet and Cézanne, and was the favorite writer of Vincent van Gogh.

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Romanticism

Romanticism was a nineteenth-century movement that celebrated the powers of emotion and intuition over rational analysis or classical ideals. Romantic artists emphasized awe, beauty, and the sublime in their works, which frequently charted the darker or chaotic sides of human life.

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Realism

Realism is an approach to art that stresses the naturalistic representation of things, the look of objects and figures in ordinary life. It emerged as a distinct movement in the mid-19th century, in opposition to the idealistic, sometimes mythical subjects that were then popular, but it can be traced back to 16th century Dutch art and forward into 20th century styles such as social realism.

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Impressionism

A movement in painting that first surfaced in France in the 1860s, it sought new ways to describe effects of light and movement, often using rich colors. The Impressionists were drawn to modern life and often painted the city, but they also captured landscapes and scenes of middle-class leisure-taking in the suburbs.

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Pointillism

Pointillism is a mode of art-making, first developed in 1880s France, in which all of the paint is applied to the surface as tiny points or daubs of color. Based on the laws of color theory, pointillism relies on the viewer's eye to mix the disparate dots into the lines, shapes, shadings, and color ranges of the full scene.

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Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French painter and sculptor who helped forge modern art. From his early Fauvist works to his late cut-outs, he emphasized expansive fields of color, the expressive potential of gesture, and the sensuality inherent in art-making.

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Pablo Picasso

Picasso dominated European painting in the first half of the last century, and remains perhaps the century's most important, prolifically inventive and versatile artist. Alongside Georges Braque he pioneered Cubism. He also made significant contributions to Surrealist painting, and media such as collage, welded sculpture, and ceramics.

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Georges Braque

Georges Braque was a modern French painter who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed analytic Cubism and Cubist collage in the early twentieth century.

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Wassily Kandinsky

A member of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter, and later a teacher at the Bauhaus, Kandinsky is best known for his pioneering breakthrough into expressive abstraction in 1913. His work prefigures that of the American Abstract Expressionists.

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Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter and was a major influence on the development of Abstract Expressionism. In his own art he fused elements of Cubism, Surrealism and Expressionism, and was close with key figures central to New York's burgeoning abstrct art scene, such as John Graham, Stuart Davis and Willem de Kooning.

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Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer and supporter of the arts whose Paris salons were key sites for avant-garde art in the early twentieth century. She built one of the earliest collections of modern art, including works by Matisse, Picasso, Braque, and others.

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Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer who published the pioneering journal Camera Work. His gallery 291 was a locus for modern artists in America.

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Fauvism

Fauvism was an early twentieth-century art movement founded by Henri Matisse and André Derain. Labeled "les fauves" or "wild beasts" by critic Louis Vauxcelles, the artists favored vibrant colors and winding gestural strokes across the canvas.

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Expressionism

Expressionism is a broad term for a host of movements in early twentieth-century Germany, from Die Brücke (1905) and Der Blaue Reiter (1911) to the early Neue Sachlichkeit painters in the 20s and 30s. Many German Expressionists used vivid colors and abstracted forms to create spiritually or psychologically intense works, while others focused on depictions of war, alienation, and the modern city.

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Cubism

Cubism was developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque between 1907-1911, and it continued to be highly influential long after its decline. This classic phase has two stages: 'Analytic', in which forms seem to be 'analyzed' and fragmented; and 'Synthetic', in which pre-existing materials such as newspaper and wood veneer are collaged to the surface of the canvas.

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Purism

Purism, an offshoot of Cubism, was a style advocated by architect Le Corbusier and artist Amadee Ozenfant. Frequently abstract, Purist works contain smooth geometric forms, even paint application, and machine-like shapes.

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Abstract Expressionism

A tendency among New York painters of the late 1940s and 1950s, all of whom were committed to an expressive art of profound emotion and universal themes. The movement embraces the gestural abstraction of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, and the color field painting of Mark Rothko and others. It blended elements of Surrealism and abstract art in an effort to create a new style fitted to the post-war mood of anxiety and trauma.

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Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism refers to a number of styles that emerged in reaction to Impressionism in the 1880s. The movement encompassed Symbolism and Neo-Impressionism before ceding to Fauvism around 1905. Its artists turned away from effects of light and atmosphere to explore new avenues such as color theory and personal feeling, often using colors and forms in intense and expressive ways.

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Titian

Titian was the leading painter of the Venetian school in 16th century Italy, spanning a more than sixty-year career. His wide range of subject matter and deep interest in color has heavily influenced further developments in Western art.

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Peter Paul Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens was a seventeenth-century Baroque artist who painted richly-toned allegories, history cycles, and religious scenes. His works are often populated by fleshy female nudes and figures in dramatic, twisting postures.

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Michelangelo

Michelangelo was a Renaissance artist working in Italy in the sixteenth century. Although first a sculptor, he is perhaps best known for his large-scale painted frescos in the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

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Claude Monet

Claude Monet was a French artist who helped pioneer the painterly effects and emphasis on light, atmosphere, and plein air technique that became hallmarks of Impressionism. He is especially known for his series of haystacks and cathedrals at different times of day, and for his late Waterlilies.

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was one of the leading figures of French Impressionism during the late 19th century. Renoir tended to favor outdoor scenes, gardens bathed in sunlight, and large gatherings of people. Known as a master of light, shadow and color, Renoir was also highly esteemed for his depiction of natural movement on the canvas. In terms of the French Impressionists' lasting popularity and fame, Renoir is perhaps second only to Monet.

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The Academy of Art

An academy is an institution where artists receive training and where they can exhibit their work. Academies flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries as places to foster national schools of art, and traditionally their brightest stars received state patronage. However, they declined in the late 19th century, when artists rejected their out-moded standards as "academic."

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Louis-Auguste Cézanne, the Artist's father, Reading "L'Evenement"

Title: Louis-Auguste Cézanne, the Artist's father, Reading "L'Evenement" (1866)

Materials: Oil on canvas

Collection: The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Description: This portrait is one of the most renowned early works by Cezanne. The rigid composition is dominated by somber hues applied in a thick impasto. The expressive premise for this piece is suggested by the artist's inclusion of his own still-life in the background, as though to solicit recognition of his talent by his famously disapproving parent. As if to force the issue, Louis-August is portrayed reading a liberal newspaper, a highly unlikely event, as he was widely known for his conservative outlook.
A Modern Olympia

Title: A Modern Olympia (1869-1870)

Materials: Oil on canvas

Collection: Private Collection

Description: This composition is Cezanne's adaptation of the theme of the demi-mondaine, or high-class prostitute suggested in Edouard Manet's scandalous Olympia of 1863. Unlike Manet's treatment, however, Cezanne portrays the prostitute as an awkwardly naked and recoiling figure, setting off the figures of her suitor (completely invisible in Manet's rendering of the subject) and an African chambermaid as transgressing "outsiders." The figures are depicted in both an expressive and abbreviated, indeed almost ungainly manner, with facial features only vaguely outlined, like masks, while their fleshy, corpulent bodies are visually articulated by dynamic, curving contours. The interior of the room is defined by a series of sweeping diagonals and bold colors depicting draperies, fruit, and an implied floral arrangement (Manet's version of the subject sported a resplendent bouquet in the center of the canvas). The suitor may be equated with Cezanne himself, possibly referring to his well-known anxiety with the opposite sex, which he struggled with throughout his entire life.
The Bay of Marseille, Seen from L'Estaque

Title: The Bay of Marseille, Seen from L'Estaque (1885)

Materials: Oil on canvas

Collection: The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

Description: In this view of L'Estaque the artist's palette bursts with a vibrant bouquet of colors previously unseen in his work. The rigid architectonic forms of the houses define the foreground, while the rest of the picture is realized just as "solidly" through the bold blues of the sea and the sky. The complimentary colors are skillfully employed by the artist to create an illusion of pictorial depth. The entire composition reminds us the artist's stated desire to "make of Impressionism something solid and enduring, like the art in museums." Cezanne painted numerous views of L'Estaque, which was one of his favorite destinations in the South of France.
Madame Cezanne in a Red Dress

Title: Madame Cezanne in a Red Dress (1888-1890)

Materials: Oil on canvas

Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Description: This is an example of the many portraits Cezanne painted of his mistress and eventual wife, Hortense Fiquet. Cezanne does not romanticize her form: the sitter's figure is rigidly imposing, almost soldier-like, her face bluntly plain and asymmetrical, with only one ear visible. It seems that the sitter exists purely for compositional purposes, her dress in itself serving as an excuse for the artist to experiment with various tones of red, like a convenient palette. The stark geometrical accents dissect the canvas in both horizontal and vertical directions, thus creating the impression of a carefully arranged, monumental still life, as opposed to a portrait of a life-long companion or "loved one."
The Card Players

Title: The Card Players (1890-1892)

Materials: Oil on canvas

Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Description: Cezanne produced his series of "Card Player" paintings, drawings, and related studies in the region of Aix-en-Provence, his ancestral home in the South of France, where he found in the image of men playing cards something timeless, like the mountains cradling an ancient people. As though having come together around a simple peasant table for a seance or cosmic conference, the card players seem at once transient and unmoving, very much masters of their environment and yet weathered testaments of time's passing.
Table, Napkin, and Fruit (A Corner of the Table)

Title: Table, Napkin, and Fruit (A Corner of the Table) (1895-1900)

Materials: Oil on canvas, 47 x 56 cm (18 1/4 x 22 in)

Collection: The Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania

Description: After studying Dutch and French Old Master still-life painting at the Musee du Louvre and other Paris galleries, Cezanne formulated his own, semi-sculptural approach to still-lifes. Typically strewn across an upturned tabletop, Cezanne's pears, peaches and other pictorial elements seem at once to rest on a solid, wooden plank, and yet float across the surface of the canvas like a new kind of calligraphy. As if to press home that point, Cezanne typically includes chairs, wooden screens, water pitchers and wine bottles to suggest that the gaze of the viewer rise vertically up the canvas, rather than plunge deep within any implied corner of real kitchen.
Study of Trees

Title: Study of Trees (c.1904)

Materials: Oil on canvas

Collection: The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass

Description: In nearly abstract watercolor landscapes dating from the latter part of his life, Cezanne achieved a perfect balance, or equilibrium, between color, form, and relatively untouched areas of the paper. The brushstrokes themselves seemed to speak a visual poetry entirely apart from the painting's subject. In this study of trees, Cezanne is moving further toward abstraction by constructing the landscape view through various constellations of color. What seems an "unfinished" composition nonetheless successfully suggests the feeling of nature without fully representing it, the overall canvas structured by intersecting diagonals that tip and turn out of the picture plane, like leaves shifting in the sunlight. This lively arrangement, along with the artist's obvious acknowledgment of the raw canvas as a positive component, directly anticipates the "incomplete" landscapes of the Fauves and provides future generations with a method to experiment with pictorial possibilities beyond the rigid tradition of naturalistic representation.
Mont Sainte-Victoire

Title: Mont Sainte-Victoire (c.1905)

Materials: Oil on canvas

Collection: The Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow

Description: This is one of the last landscapes of Mont Sainte-Victoire favored by Cezanne at the end of his life. The view is rendered in what is essentially an abstract vocabulary. Rocks and trees are suggested by mere daubs of paint as opposed to being extensively depicted. The overall composition itself, however, is clearly representational. The looming mountain is reminiscent of a puzzle of various hues, assembled into a recognizable object. This and other such late works of Cezanne proved to be of a paramount importance to the emerging modernists, who sought to liberate themselves from the rigid tradition of pictorial depiction.
The Large Bathers

Title: The Large Bathers (1898-1906)

Materials: Oil on canvas

Collection: The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Description: The Large Bathers is one of the finest examples of Cezanne's attempt at incorporating the modern, heroic nude in a natural setting. The series of very human nudes, no Greco-Roman nymphs or satyrs, are arranged into a variety of positions, like objects of still-life, under the pointed arch formed by the intersection of trees and the heavens. The figures are devoid of any particular personality - the artist assembles them for purely structural purposes. Here Cezanne is reinterpreting an iconic Western motif of the female nude, but in an exceptionally radical way. The sheer size of the painting is monumental, confronting the viewer directly with abbreviated shapes that resolve themselves into the naked limbs of his sitters. This is not yet abstraction, but in such instances Cezanne has already moved beyond the figurative tradition.

Louis-Auguste Cézanne, the Artist's father, Reading "L'Evenement", Paul Cézanne, 1866, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Oil on canvas

This portrait is one of the most renowned early works by Cezanne. The rigid composition is dominated by somber hues applied in a thick impasto. The expressive premise for this piece is suggested by the artist's inclusion of his own still-life in the background, as though to solicit recognition of his talent by his famously disapproving parent. As if to force the issue, Louis-August is portrayed reading a liberal newspaper, a highly unlikely event, as he was widely known for his conservative outlook.

A Modern Olympia, Paul Cézanne, 1869-1870, Private Collection
Oil on canvas

This composition is Cezanne's adaptation of the theme of the demi-mondaine, or high-class prostitute suggested in Edouard Manet's scandalous Olympia of 1863. Unlike Manet's treatment, however, Cezanne portrays the prostitute as an awkwardly naked and recoiling figure, setting off the figures of her suitor (completely invisible in Manet's rendering of the subject) and an African chambermaid as transgressing "outsiders." The figures are depicted in both an expressive and abbreviated, indeed almost ungainly manner, with facial features only vaguely outlined, like masks, while their fleshy, corpulent bodies are visually articulated by dynamic, curving contours. The interior of the room is defined by a series of sweeping diagonals and bold colors depicting draperies, fruit, and an implied floral arrangement (Manet's version of the subject sported a resplendent bouquet in the center of the canvas). The suitor may be equated with Cezanne himself, possibly referring to his well-known anxiety with the opposite sex, which he struggled with throughout his entire life.

The Bay of Marseille, Seen from L'Estaque, Paul Cézanne, 1885, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Oil on canvas

In this view of L'Estaque the artist's palette bursts with a vibrant bouquet of colors previously unseen in his work. The rigid architectonic forms of the houses define the foreground, while the rest of the picture is realized just as "solidly" through the bold blues of the sea and the sky. The complimentary colors are skillfully employed by the artist to create an illusion of pictorial depth. The entire composition reminds us the artist's stated desire to "make of Impressionism something solid and enduring, like the art in museums." Cezanne painted numerous views of L'Estaque, which was one of his favorite destinations in the South of France.

Madame Cezanne in a Red Dress, Paul Cézanne, 1888-1890, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Oil on canvas

This is an example of the many portraits Cezanne painted of his mistress and eventual wife, Hortense Fiquet. Cezanne does not romanticize her form: the sitter's figure is rigidly imposing, almost soldier-like, her face bluntly plain and asymmetrical, with only one ear visible. It seems that the sitter exists purely for compositional purposes, her dress in itself serving as an excuse for the artist to experiment with various tones of red, like a convenient palette. The stark geometrical accents dissect the canvas in both horizontal and vertical directions, thus creating the impression of a carefully arranged, monumental still life, as opposed to a portrait of a life-long companion or "loved one."

The Card Players, Paul Cézanne, 1890-1892, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Oil on canvas

Cezanne produced his series of "Card Player" paintings, drawings, and related studies in the region of Aix-en-Provence, his ancestral home in the South of France, where he found in the image of men playing cards something timeless, like the mountains cradling an ancient people. As though having come together around a simple peasant table for a seance or cosmic conference, the card players seem at once transient and unmoving, very much masters of their environment and yet weathered testaments of time's passing.

Table, Napkin, and Fruit (A Corner of the Table), Paul Cézanne, 1895-1900, The Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania
Oil on canvas, 47 x 56 cm (18 1/4 x 22 in)

After studying Dutch and French Old Master still-life painting at the Musee du Louvre and other Paris galleries, Cezanne formulated his own, semi-sculptural approach to still-lifes. Typically strewn across an upturned tabletop, Cezanne's pears, peaches and other pictorial elements seem at once to rest on a solid, wooden plank, and yet float across the surface of the canvas like a new kind of calligraphy. As if to press home that point, Cezanne typically includes chairs, wooden screens, water pitchers and wine bottles to suggest that the gaze of the viewer rise vertically up the canvas, rather than plunge deep within any implied corner of real kitchen.

Study of Trees, Paul Cézanne, c.1904, The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass
Oil on canvas

In nearly abstract watercolor landscapes dating from the latter part of his life, Cezanne achieved a perfect balance, or equilibrium, between color, form, and relatively untouched areas of the paper. The brushstrokes themselves seemed to speak a visual poetry entirely apart from the painting's subject. In this study of trees, Cezanne is moving further toward abstraction by constructing the landscape view through various constellations of color. What seems an "unfinished" composition nonetheless successfully suggests the feeling of nature without fully representing it, the overall canvas structured by intersecting diagonals that tip and turn out of the picture plane, like leaves shifting in the sunlight. This lively arrangement, along with the artist's obvious acknowledgment of the raw canvas as a positive component, directly anticipates the "incomplete" landscapes of the Fauves and provides future generations with a method to experiment with pictorial possibilities beyond the rigid tradition of naturalistic representation.

Mont Sainte-Victoire, Paul Cézanne, c.1905, The Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow
Oil on canvas

This is one of the last landscapes of Mont Sainte-Victoire favored by Cezanne at the end of his life. The view is rendered in what is essentially an abstract vocabulary. Rocks and trees are suggested by mere daubs of paint as opposed to being extensively depicted. The overall composition itself, however, is clearly representational. The looming mountain is reminiscent of a puzzle of various hues, assembled into a recognizable object. This and other such late works of Cezanne proved to be of a paramount importance to the emerging modernists, who sought to liberate themselves from the rigid tradition of pictorial depiction.

The Large Bathers, Paul Cézanne, 1898-1906, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Oil on canvas

The Large Bathers is one of the finest examples of Cezanne's attempt at incorporating the modern, heroic nude in a natural setting. The series of very human nudes, no Greco-Roman nymphs or satyrs, are arranged into a variety of positions, like objects of still-life, under the pointed arch formed by the intersection of trees and the heavens. The figures are devoid of any particular personality - the artist assembles them for purely structural purposes. Here Cezanne is reinterpreting an iconic Western motif of the female nude, but in an exceptionally radical way. The sheer size of the painting is monumental, confronting the viewer directly with abbreviated shapes that resolve themselves into the naked limbs of his sitters. This is not yet abstraction, but in such instances Cezanne has already moved beyond the figurative tradition.