Paul Cézanne
11839-1906
Aix-en-Provence, France
Paul Cézanne was one of the great Post-Impressionist painters, whose works and ideas strongly influenced the development of many 20th-century artists and art movements, especially Cubism.
Paul Cézanne, the great Post-Impressionist artist was a stubborn man who refused to compromise or make any form of concession to society, or to art for that matter. This often made him appear a strange and eccentric figure. He lived for his painting, it was his only passion in life, friends and family took second place and as he grew older and more insular, he was often referred to as the Hermit of Aix-en-Provence.
Paul Cézanne was born on the 19th of January 1839 in Aix en Provence in France, the eldest of three children. His father exported felt hats and his mother was the daughter of a wood turner from Marseille. At the age of 13, in 1852, Cézanne attended the Humanist College in Aix, the College Bourbon, where he became good friends with Jean Baptiste Baille and Emile Zola, who’d later earn fame as a writer.
Cézanne’s father was an authoritarian figure, unlike his son, who was indecisive and lacked self-confidence. As a consequence, Cézanne followed his father’s wishes and began a law course at Aix University in 1859. But Cézanne also attended evening classes at the drawing school in Aix and won a second prize for figure painting. Meanwhile, his father bought the Jas de Bouffan estate near Aix, the former summer residence of the governor of Provence. But Cézanne found living at home intolerable and he became increasingly withdrawn. Eventually, in 1861, his father allowed him to leave ‘Aix en Provence’ and travel to Paris where he met up with his friend Emile Zola.
Card Players by French Artist Paul Cezanne
This oil painting depicts three men (Card Players) with hats.
Self Portrait by French Artist Paul Cézanne
Madame Cézanne with Green Hat by French Artist Paul Cézanne
Cézanne painted at least 29 portraits of his wife, Marie-Hortense Fiquet. Here she appears in a green upholstered chair with her forearm resting on the chair’s elongated arm. Although she is fashionably dressed, Marie-Hortense leans at a seemingly uncomfortable angle and presents a stern expression to the viewer. The thrust-out lower lip and blank stare contrast with her whimsical hat; its transparent brim reveals her forehead underneat.
Château Noir by French Artist Paul Cézanne
After settling in Aix, France, in 1899, Cézanne ventured daily into the surrounding Provencal landscape in search of subjects to paint. Chateau Noir, a recently constructed neo-Gothic castle designed to mimic aged ruins, captivated him. He repeatedly represented this structure and also painted from its grounds, where he had an unobstructed view of nearby Mont Sainte-Victoire, another favoured subject. As is typical of landscapes executed late in his career, Cézanne applied thick paint in broad, multihued swatches.
The Card Players French Artist Paul Cézanne
The Card Players by Paul Cézanne is one in a series of five oil paintings by the French Post-Impressionist artist painted during Cézanne’s final periods in the early 1890s.
This version is composed of four figures, featuring three card players at the forefront, seated at a table, with one spectator behind. Cézanne added the spectator and the pipes on the wall to give depth to the painting.
There is tension in the way the various players are contrasted by color, light and shadow, the shape of hats, and the clothing all representing confrontation through opposites. Cézanne’s created many preparatory works for the Card Players paintings, which indicates his commitment to this series of pictures.
Rather than posing his players in group playing cards, Cézanne made studies of them individually and only brought them together in his paintings. Many different farm workers came to sit for him throughout this project, often smoking their clay pipes.
Cézanne experimented with his compositions, striving to express the essence of these farmworkers and their traditional card game. This project resulted in five closely related paintings of different sizes showing men seated at a rustic table playing cards. One version of The Card Players was sold in 2011 to the Royal Family of Qatar for a price variously estimated at over $250 million, making it the third or fourth most expensive work of art ever sold.
Still Life with Teapot by French Artist Paul Cézanne
Still Life with Teapot was painted towards the end of Cézanne’s life, thought to be between 1902 and 1906. It was painted at his studio in Aix-en-Provence and the table on which the objects are arranged still survives at the studio. A cloth is draped over the table, arranged carefully in elaborate but carefully arranged folds. On the cloth is a sugar bowl and a plate on which four fruit have been placed. On an uncovered section of the table, to the right of the painting, rests a teapot, knife and a further two fruit. The strong colours of the vessels, fruit and cloth are set against a washed-out green-grey background.
La Route en Provence by French Artist Paul Cézanne
Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses by French Artist Paul Cézanne
Cézanne rarely painted flowering plants or fresh-cut bouquets, which were susceptible to wilting under his protracted gaze. He included potted plants only in three still lifes, two views of the conservatory at Jas de Bouffan, his family’s estate, and about a dozen exquisite watercolors made over the course of two decades (from about 1878 to 1906). Cézanne seems to have reserved this particular table, with its scalloped apron and distinctive bowed legs, for three of his finest still lifes of the 1890s.This painting was once owned by the ardent gardener Claude Monet.
La Mer à l’Estaque (The Sea at L’Estaque) by French Artist Paul Cézanne
Cezanne produced ‘The Sea at L’Estaque’ in 1878 whilst visiting the fishing village L’Estaque near Marseille in Southern France. Cezanne produced the painting outside allowing him to focus on the Mediterranean landscape first-hand.