Portrait of Paul Cezanne FWN 390 1862/4 44cm x 37cm
This self-portrait was copied from a photo taken in 1861, when Cezanne was 22: the photo is actually more gentle than the painting, which he painted a couple of years after the photo was taken! In that year, on Sunday 21st of April, Cezanne finally arrived in Paris. His father had suddenly relented, and offered Paul an allowance of 125 francs a month for an open-ended stay - which was enough to survive on - Zola was earning just 120 francs. Accompanied by his father, Cezanne had gone up to Paris for the first time to join Zola. And he did what Zola had recommended - visits to the Art Museums of Paris and work in art school filled his days. He writes that he felt just as lost in Paris as he had been in Aix (only the Parisian wine was not as good, nor was the weather, and the countryside, and on and on). It wasn’t that he was homesick; there was something missing: he didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know how to be an artist. Was his dream to go up to Paris, or be an artist? He lasted six months! He returned to work in his father’s bank as a cashier. Zola continued to try and persuade his friend to come back to Paris to be an artist; but to no avail - Cezanne was nothing if not stubborn. Cezanne even signed up for the local art school in Aix. But now the feeling of being lost persisted in his home town as well. A couple of years passed, and the choice was even more stark: bank clerk or artist! This time, Cezanne was ready: he has painted the determination into his self-portrait. This time he went to Paris on his own; this time he found his own flat; this time he organized his own routine. but crucially, this time, when he went to the art college, Academie Suisse, he met companions with whom he felt at home, who also wanted, like him, to become artists, of a new era: Armand Guillaumin, Antoine Guillemet, Fransisco Oller, and most importantly Camille Pissarro. This time there was no turning back, because he had discovered that his dream was neither in Aix, nor in Paris; it lay not in the way things had been done, but what had not yet come to be: and there lay the thrill of being on the edge of becoming! and what’s more, he had found companions with the same edge.
“Where is beauty — beauty isn’t all about just niceness, loveliness. Beauty is about more rounded substantial becoming. And when we cross a new threshold worthily, what we do is we heal the patterns of repetition that were in us that had us caught somewhere. So I think beauty in that sense is about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and also a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life.” John ODonogue