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Paul Cezanne
Paul Cezanne January 19, 1839 – October 22, 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cezanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century’s new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. The line attributed to both Matisse and Picasso that Cezanne “is the father of us all” cannot be easily dismissed.
Cezanne’s work demonstrates a mastery of design, colour, composition and draftsmanship. His often repetitive, sensitive and exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognisable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields, at once both a direct expression of the sensations of the observing eye and an abstraction from observed nature. The paintings convey Cezanne’s intense study of his subjects, a searching gaze and a dogged struggle to deal with the complexity of human visual perception.
Paul Cezanne was a French painter, often called the father of modern art, who strove to develop an ideal synthesis of representation, personal expression, and abstract pictorial order.
Cezanne was born in the southern French town of Aix-en-Provence, January 19, 1839, the son of a wealthy banker. His boyhood companion was Emile Zola, who later gained fame as a novelist and man of letters. As did Zola, Cezanne developed artistic interests at an early age, much to the dismay of his father. In 1862, after a number of bitter family disputes, the aspiring artist was given a small allowance and sent to study art in Paris, where Zola had already gone. From the start he was drawn to the more radical elements of the Parisian art world. He especially admired the romantic painter Eugene Delacroix and, among the younger masters, Gustave Courbet and the notorious Edouard Manet, who exhibited realist paintings that were shocking in both style and subject matter to most of their contemporaries.
Many of Cezanne’s early works were painted in dark tones applied with heavy, fluid pigment, suggesting the moody, romantic expressionism of previous generations. Just as Zola pursued his interest in the realist novel, however, Cezanne also gradually developed a commitment to the representation of contemporary life, painting the world he observed without concern for thematic idealization or stylistic affectation.
The most significant influence on the work of his early maturity proved to be Camille Pissarro, an older but as yet unrecognized painter who lived with his large family in a rural area outside Paris. Pissarro not only provided the moral encouragement that the insecure Cezanne required, but he also introduced him to the new impressionist technique for rendering outdoor light.
Along with the painters Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and a few others, Pissarro had developed a painting style that involved working outdoors (en plein air) rapidly and on a reduced scale, employing small touches of pure color, generally without the use of preparatory sketches or linear outlines. In such a manner Pissarro and the others hoped to capture the most transient natural effects as well as their own passing emotional states as the artists stood before nature. Under Pissarro’s tutelage, and within a very short time during 1872-73, Cezanne shifted from dark tones to bright hues and began to concentrate on scenes of farmland and rural villages.
Although he seemed less technically accomplished than the other impressionists, Cezanne was accepted by the group and exhibited with them in 1874 and 1877. In general the impressionists did not have much commercial success, and Cezanne’s works received the harshest critical commentary. He drifted away from many of his Parisian contacts during the late 1870s and ’80s and spent much of his time in his native Aix. After 1882, he did not work closely again with Pissarro. In 1886, Cezanne became embittered over what he took to be thinly disguised references to his own failures in one of Zola’s novels. As a result he broke off relations with his oldest supporter. In the same year, he inherited his father’s wealth and finally, at the age of 47, became financially independent, but socially he remained quite isolated.
Cezanne’s goal was, in his own mind, never fully attained. He left most of his works unfinished and destroyed many others. He complained of his failure at rendering the human figure, and indeed the great figural works of his last years-such as The Large Bathers (circa 1899-1906, Museum of Art, Philadelphia) – reveal curious distortions that seem to have been dictated by the rigor of the system of color modulation he imposed on his own representations. The succeeding generation of painters, however, eventually came to be receptive to nearly all of Cezanne’s idiosyncrasies. Cezanne’s heirs felt that the naturalistic painting of impressionism had become formularized, and a new and original style, however difficult it might be, was needed to return a sense of sincerity and commitment to modern art.
For many years Cezanne was known only to his old impressionists colleagues and to a few younger radical Post-Impressionist artists, including the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and the French painter Paul Gauguin. In 1895, however, Ambroise Vollard, an ambitious Paris art dealer, arranged a show of Cezanne’s works and over the next few years promoted them successfully. By 1904, Cezanne was featured in a major official exhibition, and by the time of his death (in Aix on October 22, 1906) he had attained the status of a legendary figure. During his last years many younger artists traveled to Aix to observe him at work and to receive any words of wisdom he might offer. Both his style and his theory remained mysterious and cryptic; he seemed to some a naive primitive, while to others he was a sophisticated master of technical procedure. The intensity of his color, coupled with the apparent rigor of his compositional organization, signaled to most that, despite the artist’s own frequent despair, he had synthesized the basic expressive and representational elements of painting in a highly original manner.
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The Large Bathers 1906
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $299.00The Card Players
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Jug, Curtain and Fruit Bowl
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $269.00Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00Pyramid of Skulls 1901
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00The Basket of Apples 1893
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00Portrait of Madame Cézanne
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00L’estaque, Melting Snow
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00The Boy in the Red Vest
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00The Murder 1870
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00The Card Players (Les Joueurs De Cartes)
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $389.00The Card Players
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $369.00Young Man and Skull
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $329.00The Drinker
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Man in a Blue Smock
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Man Smoking a Pipe
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Man with Crossed Arms 1899
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Peasant Standing with Arms Crossed 1895
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $329.00Smoker
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00The Artist’s Father, Reading “L’événement,” 1866
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $369.00The Artist’s Son, Paul
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Woman with a Coffeepot 1895
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $329.00Young Italian Woman at a Table
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Seated Peasant
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $299.00Boy in a Red Vest
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $299.00Boy in a Red Waistcoat
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Boy in the Red Vest
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Harlequin
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $349.00Pierot and Harlequin 1888
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Girl at the Piano 1866
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $359.00The Negro Scipio
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00La Douleur; La Madeleine 1869
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $289.00Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $349.00Three Bathers 1875
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $339.00Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $359.00Four Women Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $379.00Bathers 1890
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $399.00Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses)
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $409.00Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $439.00The Large Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $449.00Bathers at Rest
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $379.00The Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $359.00Bathers in Front of a Tent
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $389.00Four Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $379.00Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $359.00Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $369.00Five Bathers 1877
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $339.00Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $339.00Group of Bathers 1895
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $419.00Etude De Baigneuses
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $429.00Group of Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $389.00Three Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $399.00Seven Bathers 1900
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $369.00The Battle of Love 1880
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $359.00Three Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $329.00Venus and Love 1878
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $249.00Bather and Rocks
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $319.00The Bather 1885
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $319.00Baigneur Aux Bras Écartés
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Standing Bather, seen from the Back
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $299.00Baigneur Debout 1876
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $389.00Baigneur
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $329.00Leda and the Swan (Léda Au Cygne)
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Femmes S’habillant 1867
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Standing Nude 1898
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $319.00L’enlèvement
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $289.00Satyrs and Nymphs 1867
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $269.00Baigneurs et Baigneuses
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $379.00L’été 1860
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $549.00Le Printemps 1860
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $599.00L’automne 1860
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $569.00L’hiver 1860
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $569.00A Modern Olympia 1873
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $269.00A Modern Olympia (Le Pasha) 1870
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $249.00Afternoon in Naples (With White Maid)
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $289.00Afternoon in Naples 1876
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00Pastoral 1870
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00The Thieves and the Donkey
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $289.00The Temptation of Saint Anthony 1874
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $289.00Preparation for the Funeral (The Autopsy) 1869
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $319.00The Fishermen (Fantastic Scene) 1875
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00The Temptation of St. Anthony 1870
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $289.00The Pond 1877
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00Paul Alexis Reading at Zola’s House
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $259.00Two Women and Child in An Interior 1870
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00La Promenade 1871
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00The Two Sisters
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00Christ in Limbo 1869
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $329.00Fillette
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $269.00Girl with Birdcage 1888
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $269.00La Promenade 1866
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $269.00La Conversation
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00La Vie Des Champs
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00Picnic on a Riverbank
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $289.00Apotheosis of Delacroix
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00Landscape, with Guillaumin Seated Under a Tree 1865
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $289.00A Painter at Work
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $289.00La Fontaine
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00D’après Delacroix- La Barque De Dante 1870
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $289.00Man with a Vest 1873
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00