Alley of chestnut trees and pool at the Jas de Bouffan FWN 55 1868-70 44cm x 37
Some scholars date this painting a year or two later, and you can see why: the different tones of the greens, the lighter palette, the shimmering effect created by the way the paint is applied, the more formal design. Whatever the exact date, it marks a turning point in Cezanne’s development as he moves towards the lighter and more colourful palette of the impressionists. I like this avenue of chestnuts, but I’m not sure why: the painting grows on you, despite the rather strange vertical green of the lower right; and it’s a painting that is often exhibited, and one that’s often in books about Cezanne. I think it’s more by association: we had chestnut trees at school, and I remember eating the nuts; and there’s quite a few Chestnut Trees that line the streets of Paris.
“Social distinctions can only be based on common utility” - Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, article 1, 1789. One of the most profound insights to blossom out of the Era of human development that ended with the Industrial Revolution of the 1800’s was the idea, and belief, that there are fundamental rights that accrue to all persons simply by the fact that they are human beings. Everybody has these rights, not by being able to pay for them, not by being rich and famous, not because of wealth, capital or income, not by being intelligent and knowledgeable, not because they belong to this or that family, not because they belong to this or that religion, not because of their skin, not because of their race, not because of anything like that: simply because they are human beings. In a Republic, there is no justification for social distinctions, except to enhance the common good. Wow - this was a major step forward in the expressed values of human development; but, the reality of the transition from Monarchy to Republic would require a Revolution.
In the aftermath of the revolution in 1798, France was bubbling with various factions seeking to direct the future of the country. Times were hard in the young Republic: “The most striking fact of the day was the misery of the industrial proletariat. Despite the growth of the economy, or perhaps in part because of it, and because, as well, of the vast rural exodus owing to both population growth and increasing agricultural productivity, workers crowded into the urban slums. The working day was long, and the wages were very low. A new urban misery emerged, more visible, more shocking, and in some respects, even more extreme than the rural misery of the Old Regime” (under the Monarchy): Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty. By 1849, Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of the real Napoleon!), with the help of the banking financiers, was elected the President of the Republic, and in 1851, he went on to seize dictatorial power, declaring himself the ‘Emperor of France’ with the words: “though my principles are Republican, Monarchy is best for France”. He initiated a period of what we might now call “quantitive easing” – infrastructure building work, (and imperial foreign expansion - think China, Morocco, Vietnam…). And like the ‘need’ for austerity, the ‘need’ for a monarchy silenced the general public…..for a while.
There was money in rabbit skins, and Cezanne’s father, Louis-Auguste, could smell it! The small town of his birth, Saint-Zacharie, wasn’t big enough for our Loius-Auguste: off to Paris at the age of 22 (1821), he trained as a hat-maker and hat salesman, and had a ‘liason’ with the boss’s wife. Four years later, he had his own hat business (with two partners) in Aix. Hats were big business – 470 men, and 240 women employed in hat making, and many associated activities, especially rabbit farming. Louis-Auguste effectively began speculating in rabbit furs: he lent money to farmers in hard times and charged interest (and if things went wrong, Uncle Dominique was a bailiff!). The hat business was so successful that they were able to expand, and in 1848, Louis Auguste and Joseph Cabassol, clerk, opened a bank.
The expansion generated by the Industrial Revolution created the milieu for a new strata of society to emerge: the entrepreneur. Cezanne’s father was such a guy - his own man, he had no time for the propertied rich, those whose wealth was derived from the capital they had inherited, and whose income derived from nothing more than the interest on the capital, on the rents they collected. He, on the other hand, had worked hard all his life; but more than that: he had taken risks. He had earned his income. This was justified because it contributed to the common good: he lent money to the farmers to rear the rabbits, he bought the rabbits off them, made the hats, and sold the hats to the townsfolk, who worked on the farms…a virtuous circle. Unlike the rich ‘rentier’ class, aloof from local people, he considered himself part and parcel of the local community, making it financially viable.
In 1859, Louis-Auguste Cezanne accepted a property in payment of debts accrued for 84,000 francs; on the outskirts of Aix, it was called Jas de Bouffan; though somewhat dilapidated, it was nevertheless a fitting residence for a successful entrepreneur, a man of the new bourgeoisie - living proof that the new Republican Era was better than the restrictions of Monarchy. Louis Auguste did not have much time for church on Sundays, but, if he had, he would have delighted in the new hymns being sung: (hymn from 1843)
Go, labour on: spend, and be spent,
Thy joy to do the Father’s will:
It is the way the Master went;
Should not the servant tread it still?
Besides generating opportunity for a new strata of people, entrepreneurs, the Industrial Revolution generated a new way of living: growth. Up until now, the growth of society had remained just above 0% for the last thousands of years: any population increases had always been nullified by wars and disasters, famine and disease; or had been matched by an increase in output - not so much due to new technology, but simply by the fact that there were more guys to do the work. The Industrial Revolution changed that with a vengeance: growth from 1870 onwards averaged 1.6%. “A society in which the growth rate is 0.1% per year, as in the Eighteenth Century, reproduces itself with little or no change from one generation to the next: the occupational structure is the same, as is the property structure. A society that grows at 1% per year, as the most advanced societies have done since the turn of the Nineteenth Century, is a society that undergoes deep and permanent change.” Thomas Piketty.
Every Era of human development brings its own dignity and disaster, its own crisis and opportunity.
“Just as a continually growing cancer eventually destroys its life-support systems by destroying its host, a continuously expanding global economy is slowly destroying its host – the Earth’s ecosystem” Lester Brown
Another revolution is called for….