Bather standing drying her hair FWN 901 1869 29cm x 13
(the figures do not tally accurately because some paintings have unconfirmed authenticity, or are dubiously dated. The figures obviously do not include paintings that are lost or destroyed, but nevertheless do give an overall impression of Cezanne’s workload through his developing artistic phases. Some human form paintings are hard to tell if they’re male or female!)
Cezanne only painted two paintings of the human form before he reached thirty. He was by all accounts fairly shy; he produced paintings with men and women in them – as part of historic or mythological type scenes; but only two, ‘human form’ paintings as such. This little painting is something of a cameo, and Cezanne often repeats the same pose in other paintings later in life.
As you can see from the chart, Cezanne did have a bash at human figure painting in the 1870’s – the decade of his “impressionist” phase – and we’ll have a closer look at these later; then he almost gave up for ten years, but started again with a vengeance in the last years of his life, when he painted those large bather paintings that have become iconic. As we map human development more and more deeply, we discover that the human form holds all that we have been through-out our entire evolution, and so now, all that we are, and the potential for all that we can be.
when earth and the soul are in the mood to create beauty
what happens? -
deep within the womb
in a stillness
in a place before darkness and light
in a place before knowing
in the space of being
in the grace of becoming
there emerges
as when the first glint of the dawn of eternity appeared
quarks become atoms
atoms become molecules
molecules become cells
then emerges the photosynthetic cycle
the organ systems
the neural net
the reptilian brain stem
the mammalian limbic system
the primate cortex
the complex neuro-cortex
and as many connections
as the stars in the universe:
when earth and souls are in the mood to create beauty
in all creation’s dust, divine beauty shines out clear.
Rumi, Qasem-E Anwar, Wilber