He painted what he knew best
Provence created C茅zanne. This sunny, rocky, and pine-laden region of southern France became motif and inspiration to the French Post-Impressionist Paul C茅zanne, the landscape that forged his identity into the artist the world knows as the father of modern painting.
If the best writers follow the famous counsel, "Write what you know," so C茅zanne painted what he knew best: his homeland. Born in the town of Aix-en-Provence, France, in 1839, he did not stray far from home for his subjects - finding most of them within about 20 miles from Aix.
"There are treasures to be taken away from this country which has not yet found an interpreter worthy of the riches it offers," C茅zanne wrote of Provence.
C茅zanne found his universe of artistic ideas to be close to home: his banker father's estate, Jas de Bouffan, just outside Aix, where C茅zanne tentatively began to paint. The nearby seaside village of L'Estaque, where he first allowed the sunlight of the Mediterranean onto his canvases. And, ultimately, to the discovery of his supreme subject, the mountain Sainte-Victoire (visible from Aix).
Marking the centenary of C茅zanne's death, a major new exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington explores this symbiotic relationship between C茅zanne and the landscape of his homeland, surprisingly the first to focus on the role of Provence in the artist's life. "C茅zanne in Provence" includes about 117 oil paintings and watercolors of Proven莽al scenes, portraits of Proven莽al people, and still lifes.
But the notion that C茅zanne's life was entirely provincial - circumscribed within the boundaries of Provence - does not tell the whole story. C茅zanne's desire to follow a career in painting was met by family resistance. In order to develop his technique, he was forced to spend time intermittently in Paris in the company of other artists - most important, the Impressionist Camille Pissaro.
Under Pissaro's guidance, C茅zanne began to develop his own style. He started to work outdoors in sight of his subjects, adopt a lighter approach to applying paint to the canvas, and use brighter colors. It was as a result of Pissaro's tutelage that C茅zanne decided: "To paint is to record one's sensations of color."
Pissaro convinced him to break up forms on the canvas into slanting patches (les t芒ches) of color, enabling C茅zanne to arrive at his characteristic brush stroke. However, C茅zanne differentiated himself from the Impressionists by using colors of greater contrast and rendering objects in a more solidified manner. His stated goal: to "make of Impressionism something solid and enduring."
His oil painting "Houses in Provence: The Riaux Valley near L'Estaque" is an example of the artist's architectonic understanding of form. In the 1920s, Picasso and Braque would take this approach further into total abstraction in their development of Cubism. "C茅zanne is the father of us all," Picasso said, speaking of modern painters.
For several years after 1869, C茅zanne based himself in L'Estaque, where he experienced the turning point of his career, acquiring "the altered gaze" that enabled him to become an artist who would ultimately, in his own words, "render the truth in painting." Subsequently, he moved to other locations in the region where he could pursue this artistic quest.
In a sense, the passage of time was defined by place in his life. Thus the National Gallery has organized this exhibition in rooms devoted to the different locales C茅zanne frequented in order to pursue the motifs that absorbed him. The work of painting had become his raison d'锚tre.
From L'Estaque, the course of the artist's life took a rather twisting path through various Proven莽al villages; then to the Bib茅mus quarry, where he focused on geometrical rock formations; on to the Ch芒teau Noir, a manor house almost obscured by Aleppo pines; and finally to the Atelier des Lauves near Aix, the studio where C茅zanne could further his quest to capture his most famous motif: Montagne Sainte-Victoire.
It was this one Proven莽al scene that, from about 1885, began to interest him above all others: the 3,600-foot mountain visible from Aix. C茅zanne painted this subject some 25 times, making it one of the most scrutinized sites in the history of art. "Not since Moses has anyone seen a mountain so greatly," commented the poet Rainer Maria Rilke on C茅zanne's involvement with Sainte-Victoire.
In the painting "Montagne Sainte-Victoire Above the Route du Tholonet," the mountain seems to emerge organically from the countryside. In other paintings by C茅zanne, Sainte-Victoire appears more remote and crystalline.
C茅zanne viewed these paintings as more attempts to capture this elusive subject. In 1903, three years before his death, he wrote: "I am working obstinately; I am beginning to see the promised land." Through the artistic genius of C茅zanne in these canvases, we may be beginning to see it, too.
鈥� 'C茅zanne in Provence' is at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, until May 7. It will be at the Mus茅e Granet, Aix-en-Provence, from June 9 to Sept.17.
