Paul
Cézanne was born on January 19, 1839, in Aix-en-Provence,
France and died in his home in Aix at age 67 on October
23, 1906. Although born out of wedlock, Cézanne was
acknowledged by his father, a hatter turned wealthy banker.
Cézanne’s parents were married in Aix a few
years after his birth.
In
1857, at the age of 18, Cézanne enrolled at the École
Gratuite de Dessin (free drawing school) in Aix. At the
encouragement of his father, Cézanne attended law
school. He dropped out in 1861 to travel to Paris pursue
his art. While in Paris he attended a private art school,
the Académie Suisse (Claude Monet attended the same
school). Despite the submission of a variety of his work,
Cézanne's paintings were never accepted by the traditional
and prestigious French Salon.
Cézanne
worked in Aix and Paris for many years. Cézanne refused
to enlist in the French army during the Franco-Prussian
War (1870-71) and was considered a draft-dodger. He fathered
a son born in 1872, with Hortense Fiquet, whom he married
several years later.
Cézanne's
work found favor with the Impressionists, and he displayed
three paintings in the first Impressionist exhibition in
1874. Although generally a solitary man, Cézanne
was close friends with some of the other Impressionists.
Camille Pisarro was Cézanne’s most consistent
supporter from 1861 onward; Cézanne was named one
of the executors of Pissaro’s will. Cézanne
and Claude Monet were also good friends, and greatly admired
one another's work. His fellow artists frequently commented
on the clarity and elegance of his varied subjects. Cézanne
had an uncanny ability to juxtapose various forms, colors,
and textures into a unified composition. Monet, as well
as Edgar Degas and Paul Gaugin all included Cézanne’s
paintings in their collections.
Despite
his friendships, Cézanne was wary of the world and
spent most of his life in relative isolation. He wrote,
“I should remain alone, people’s cunning is
such that I can’t get away from it, it’s theft,
conceit, infatuation, rape, seizure of your production,
and yet nature is very beautiful.” - from a letter
to his son, also named Paul, September 28, 1906. His childhood
friend, the famous French writer Emile Zola, with whom he
carried on an active correspondence, was a significant influence
in his life. Cézanne was characterized as private
and frequently misunderstood. Painting was an obsession.
Just before his death he complained to his son, “
I live a bit as if in a void. Painting is what matters most
to me.” His last visit to Paris was in 1904 and
he died two years later.
Cézanne
aimed to transform the Impressionist style of painting into
something more concrete. He was an important bridge from
the Impressionists to more modern forms of art. Like the
other Impressionists, Cézanne believed it imperative
not to copy an object, but to depict the sensations it created.
He said, “to paint is to register these color sensations.”
He painted an unusally wide variety of subject matter, from
portraiture, to landscape, to still life. Cézanne's
style of painting was quite different from that of some
of the other Impressionists such as Renoir and Monet and
his brush strokes were more deliberate than those of many
of his impressionist contemporaries.
Although
perhaps only coincidence, a large number of the Impressionist
painters were "nearsighted" (ie. myopes). For
example, Cézanne, and Renoir both suffered from and
appeared to exploit the blur induced by their myopia in
their work. Renoir was known to step back from the canvas
so that it was out of focus. Cézanne, when offered
spectacles raged, “take away those vulgar things!”
Arguably, the sharp focus produced by corrective lenses
worked against the global abstract style that the Impressionists
sought to achieve. In short, uncorrected myopia may have
offered a "shortcut" to abstracting the general
forms and colors of the scene being painted.
In
1890, at age 51, Cézanne was diagnosed with diabetes
which is speculated may have induced some concurrent retinopathy.
Later, as he entered his 60s, Cézanne began to complain
of “cerebral disturbances” that prevented him
from moving about freely. The extent and nature of these
cerebral disturbances, however, is unclear.
