Cézanne, Paul (pōl sāzän`), 1839–1906, French painter, b. Aix-en-Provence. Cézanne was the leading figure in the revolution toward abstraction in modern painting.

Early Life and Work

From early childhood Cézanne was a close friend of Émile Zola Zola, Émile (āmēl` zôlä`), 1840–1902, French novelist, b. Paris.
..... Click the link for more information. , who for a time encouraged the painter in his work. Cézanne went to Paris in 1861; there he met Pissarro Pissarro, Camille (kämē`yə pēsärō`), 1830–1903, French impressionist painter, b. St.
..... Click the link for more information. , who strongly influenced his development. He divided his time between Provence and the environs of Paris until his retirement to Aix in 1899. Cézanne's early work is marked by a heavy use of the palette knife, from which he created thickly textured and violently deformed shapes and scenes of a fantastic, dreamlike quality. Although these impulsive paintings exhibit few of the features of his later style, they anticipate the expressionist idiom of the 20th cent.

Through Pissarro, Cézanne came to know Manet Manet, Édouard (ādwär` mänā`), 1832–83, French painter, b. Paris.
..... Click the link for more information. and the impressionist painters (see impressionism impressionism, in painting, late-19th-century French school that was generally characterized by the attempt to depict transitory visual impressions, often painted directly from nature, and by the use of pure, broken color to achieve brilliance and luminosity.
..... Click the link for more information. ). He was concerned, after 1870, with the use of color to create perspective, but the steady, diffused light in his works is utterly unrelated to the impressionist preoccupation with transitory light effects. House of the Hanged Man (1873–74; Louvre) is characteristic of his impressionist period. He exhibited at the group's show of 1874 but later diverged from the impressionist style and developed a firmer structure in his paintings.

Mature Work

Cézanne sought to "recreate nature" by simplifying forms to their basic geometric equivalents, utilizing color and considerable distortion to express the essence of landscape (e.g., Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1885–87, Phillips Coll., Washington, D.C.), still lifes (e.g., The Kitchen Table, 1888–90, Louvre), and figural groupings (e.g., The Card Players, 1890–92; one version, S.C. Clark Coll., New York City). His portraits are vital studies of character, e.g., Madame Cézanne (c.1885; S. S. and V. White Coll., Ardmore, Pa.) and Ambroise Vollard (Musée du Petit Palais, Paris).

Cézanne developed a new type of spatial pattern. Instead of adhering to the traditional focalized system of perspective, he portrayed objects from shifting viewpoints. He created vibrating surface effects from the play of flat planes against one another and from the subtle transitions of tone and color. In all his work he revealed a reverence for the integrity and dignity of simple forms by rendering them with an almost classical structural stability. His Bathers (1898–1905; Philadelphia Mus. of Art) is the monumental embodiment of a number of Cézanne's visual systems.

The artist's later works are largely still lifes (among them his famous apples), male figures, and recurring landscape subjects. While retaining a solid substructure, they seem freer and more spontaneous and employ more transparent painterly effects than earlier works. Cézanne worked in oil, watercolor, and drawing media, often making several versions of his works.

Influence and Collections

Cézanne's influence on the course of modern art, particularly on the development of cubism cubism, art movement, primarily in painting, originating in Paris c.1907.

Cubist Theory

Cubism began as an intellectual revolt against the artistic expression of previous eras.
..... Click the link for more information. , is enormous and profound. His theories spawned a whole new school of aesthetic criticism, especially in England, that has ranked him among the foremost French masters. There are fine collections of his paintings in the Louvre; the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City; and the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pa.

Bibliography

See his letters, ed. by J. Rewald (tr. 1941); his drawings, ed. by A. Chappuis (1973); his watercolors, ed. by T. Reff (1963); catalogues raisonnés by A. Chappuis (2 vol., tr. 1973) and J. Rewald (2 vol., 1997); biographies by J. Lindsay (1969) and J. Rewald (new ed. 1986); studies by M. Schapiro (2d ed. 1962), W. Andersen (1970), S. Geist (1988), R. Fry (new ed. 1989), and F. Cachin, I. Cahn, H. Layrette, and J. J. Rishel (1996).

Cézanne, Paul

Self-Portrait, oil on canvas by Paul Cézanne, c. …

(credit: The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images)

(born Jan. 19, 1839, Aix-en-Provence, France—died Oct. 22, 1906, Aix-en-Provence) French painter, one of the founders of modern painting. In 1859 he entered law school; in 1861 he left to study art in Paris. Critics denounced the works he exhibited at the Salon des Refusés (1863), but he persevered. He became associated with the Impressionists, exhibiting with them in 1874 and 1877. Unlike the other artists in the group, he emphasized the structure of objects rather than the vision presented by the light that emanated from them, basing his compositions on cubic masses, patches of colour, and architectonic lines. By the late 1870s he had broken with the Impressionists, exploring his own radically new way of simultaneously depicting deep space and flat design; his later work is therefore often classified as “Post-Impressionist.” From 1890 to 1905 he produced masterpieces, one after another: variations of the Mont Sainte-Victoire landscape, three versions of Boy in a Red Waist-Coat, countless still-life images, and the Bathers series of nudes. Public reception to his first one-man exhibition (1895) was cool, but he slowly gained acceptance. His work was a major source of inspiration for the Cubists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. See also Cubism; Impressionism; Post-Impressionism.