Cézanne. Nathalia Brodskaya

I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.”

Paul Cézanne

      © Parkstone International, New York, USA

      © Confidential Concepts, worldwide, USA

      Chronology

      Portrait of the Artist, 1873–1876.

      Oil on canvas, 53 × 64 cm

      Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

      1839 – Paul Cézanne is born on January 19, in Aix-en-Provence.

      1849–1851 – Studies as a half-boarder at the St. Joseph school together with Philippe Solari, the future sculptor, and Henri Gasquet.

      1852–1858 Studies at the Collège Bourbon in Aix, with Émile Zola and Baptistin Baille. Enrolls at the municipal school of drawing at the Aix Museum.

      1859 – Studies law at Aix University and continues to attend the municipal school of drawing from November 1859 until August 1860. Sets up a studio at the Jas de Bouffan.

      1861 – Leaves Aix for Paris. Works at the Académie Suisse, meets Armand Guillaumin and Camille Pissarro, and paints a portrait of Zola, destroying it unfinished. Returns to Aix in September and starts work in his father’s bank. Attends the municipal school of drawing in Aix.

      1862 – Leaves the bank in January and devotes himself entirely to painting. In November he goes a second time to Paris and settles there.

      1863 – Works at the Académie Suisse together with Antoine Guillemet, Guillaumin, and Francisco Oller. He and Zola visit the Salon and the Salon des Refusés.

      1864 – Sends one of his works to the Salon, but the Jury rejects it. Copies a painting by Eugène Delacroix at the Louvre.

      1866 – The Jury of the Salon rejects his portrait of Valabrègue (V. 126). Cézanne writes a letter of protest to Count Nieuwerkerke, chairman of the Beaux-Arts, with the demand that the Salon des Refusés be reopened. Zola’s articles published in the newspaper L’Événement in defence of avant-garde artists are issued in a separate pamphlet with a dedication to Cézanne.

      1867 – His paintings Punch and Rum and Intoxication are rejected by the Salon. Zola defends him in the press (Figaro, April 12, 1867).

      1869 – Meets Hortense Fiquet (b. 1850), who works at a bookbinder’s and also as a model. Once again rejected by the Salon.

      1870 – After the declaration of the Franco-Prussian war, he works in Aix and later goes to L’Estaque, accompanied by Hortense Fiquet. Zola comes to stay with him for a short time. After the pronouncement of the Third Republic, his father is elected a member of the Municipal Council and Cézanne a member of the fine arts commission of the Aix school. However, he does not participate in the commission’s activities.

      1872 – Birth of Paul, his son, by Hortense Fiquet. Cézanne moves with his family to Pontoise where he works with Pissarro.

      1873 – Lives in Auvers-sur-Oise, working in the house of Dr. Gachet. Pissarro introduces him to Julien Tanguy, the art dealer.

      1873 – Takes part in the first Impressionist exhibition (Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs), held from April 15 to May 15. He exhibits The House of the Hanged Man (V. 133), A Modern Olympia (V. 225), and the study Landscape at Auvers.

      1876 – He refuses to send his works to the second Impressionist exhibition and in August returns to Paris.

      1877 – Works with Pissarro in Pontoise and Auvers, and also in Chantilly, Fontainebleau, and Issy.

      1880 – In August he stays with Zola in Medan, meeting Joris Karl Huysmans.

      1881 – Lives in Pontoise (but keeps his apartment in Paris) where he works with Pissarro and meets Paul Gauguin.

      1882 – Admitted to the Salon as a “pupil of Guillemet.”

      1883 – At the end of December he visits Claude Monet and Renoir. On May 4, he goes to the funeral of Édouard Manet.

      1884 – The portrait he submits for the Salon is rejected by the panel, and from then onwards Cézanne apparently sends no more of his works to the Salon. Paul Signac buys one of his landscapes from Tanguy.

      1886 – In March, Zola’s L’Œuvre is published. Breaks with Zola. On April 28, Cézanne marries Hortense Fiquet. In the summer he lives in Paris and in Hattenville. On October 23, his father dies, leaving him a legacy.

      1887 – Exhibits in Brussels with “Les XX.”

      1888 – In January Renoir stays with him in Aix and they work together.

      1889 – Exhibits The House of the Hanged Man at Auvers at the World Exposition of 1889–1890.

      1890 – In January he exhibits three paintings at the seventh exhibition of “Les XX” in Brussels, among them is The House of the Hanged Man at Auvers.

      1894 – In the fall he visits Monet at Giverny where he meets Joseph Clemenceau, Auguste Rodin, Octave Mirbeau, Gustave Geffroy, and Mary Cassat.

      1895 – Cézanne’s first personal exhibition is organized by Vollard on Rue Laffitte (150 works). Two of Cézanne’s landscapes are bequeathed by Gustave Caillebotte to the Musée de Luxembourg.

      1897 – October 25, death of Cézanne’s mother. One of his landscapes is acquired by the National Gallery in Berlin as a gift from a Berlin patron of the arts.

      1900 – His Vase of Fruit, Glass, and Apples (V. 341), Pool at the Jas de Bouffan (V. 167), and a landscape are displayed at the exhibition “A Century of French Art,” held at the World Exposition in Paris.

      1901 – Denis exhibits Hommage à Cézanne at the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français. Cézanne sends several paintings to the Exposition de la Libre Esthétique in Brussels and to the Salon des Indépendants. He builds a studio on Chemin des Lauves, not far from Aix.

      1902 – Death of Zola on September 29.

      1903 – Lives in Aix. His paintings are shown at the Impressionist exhibition of the Vienna Secession, among them Mardi Gras and Road at Pontoise.

      1904 A large retrospective exhibition at the Salon d’Automne. A large individual exhibition at the Cassirer Gallery, Berlin.

      1905 – Takes part in an exhibition at the Grafton Gallery in London, organized by Paul Durand-Ruel.

      1906 – The Château Noir is exhibited at the Société des Amis des Arts in Aix as the work of one of Pissarro’s pupils. On October 6, the Salon d’Automne opens, at which ten of Cézanne’s works are shown. On October 22, the death of the artist.

      1907 – Posthumous exhibition at the Salon d’Automne.

* * *

      At the turn of the century, Cézanne began to be taken more and more seriously by the avant-garde: Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Vlaminck, Derain, and others, among them young Russian painters whose new art owed much to the master from Provence. However, many of Cézanne’s contemporaries did not realize his true greatness.

      The Four Seasons

      1859–1860

      Oil on canvas, 314 × 104 cm each

      Musée du Petit Palais, Paris

      When Paul Cézanne died in October 1906 in Aix-en-Provence, the Paris newspapers reacted by publishing a handful of rather equivocal obituaries. “Imperfect talent,” “crude painting,” “an artist that never was,” “incapable of anything but sketches,” owing to “a congenital sight defect” – such were the epithets showered on the great artist during his lifetime and repeated at his graveside.

      Two Women and Child in an Interior

      1860

      Oil