Rue de Saules, Montmatre FWN 50 1867/68 31.5cm x 39
It was in 1861 that Cezanne met Armand Guillaumin and Pissarro at the college of art the Academie Suisse. Guillaumin’s influence on Cezanne has always taken second place to Pissarro’s; but in fact, the three not only went to college together, they worked together and socialized together. Pissarro was an anarchist and activist; Guillaumin liked to paint the industrial scenes of Paris, and encouraged Cezanne to accompany him. Guillaumin went on to exhibit in six of the Impressionist exhibitions in Paris, from 1874 over the next ten year period. Cezanne gave this painting to his life-long friend, maybe as a memento. The paint is built up, layer by layer, with the final brushstrokes of paint laid as part of the visual effect: it’s a bit quirky, and maybe that’s why I warm to it. Cezanne often invites you into the painting from the left hand side; and in this one, he does that using the lighter browns and greens, brushed away to the left, opening the scene up to a gentle approach. The white house above the gentle bank is a bit abrupt: something foreboding seems to be happening in the sky above; but the central house, with the sloping roof leans into its neighbour on the left, and almost appears to wink. Cezanne brings you back down the right hand side of the painting, along with a path that looks like a stream of water. It reminds me of a little pirate’s village in Cornwall, or Brittany. But it’s Montmatre. Their connection with Montmatre rested on the firm foundations of the paint and artists’ shop owned by ‘Pere’ Tanguy, father to all the Impressionist artists, providing them with good quality art supplies, very often for nothing except an IOU or in exchange for their paintings. Cezanne often ran up huge debts to Tanguy, who barely made a living. The people of Montmatre, like Pere Tanguy were socialist by inclination and chose as their Prefect, one Georges Clemenceau, who had been a councillor in Vaucluse down in the South, and who was to became a friend of Monet and the Impressionists, and later became Prime Minister of France (in 1906). In 1891, at the age of 50, Armand won the French National Lottery (100,000) and was able to give up his government job, and devote the rest of his life to art. He remained friends with Cezanne and Pissarro, befriended the Van Gogh brothers, and had a long and happy life till he passed away in 1927. A street there is in Paris famous
For which no rhyme our language yields
Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is –
The New Street of the Little Fields;
And here’s an inn, not rich and splendid,
But still in comfortable case;
The which in youth I oft attended,
To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse.
This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is –
A sort of soup, or broth, or brew,
Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes,
That Greenwich never could outdo;
Green herbs, red peppers, mussles, saffern,
Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace;
All these you eat at Terre’s tavern,
In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.
Thackeray 1811 - 1863 “The idea that cooking is a defining human activity is not a new one. In 1773, the Scottish writer, James Boswell, noting that ‘no beast is a cook’, called homo sapiens ‘the cooking animal’…Fifty years later, in the physiology of taste, the French gastronome, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin claimed that cooking made us who we are, by teaching people to use fire, it had ‘done the most to advance the cause of civilization’” Michael Pollan, Cooked.