La Maison du pere Lacroix, Auvers-sur-Oise FWN 77 1873 61.5 cm x 51
Sometimes it happens that someone has the honour of bestowing on another human being, the gift of self-worth. What an honour that is; and what a gift to receive! namaste There’s a reciprocity, a bond. This bond is not a familial one; it is not even one of friendship. Neither is it that someone teaches something to someone else; it is not the giving of a skill. There’s an openness, a positivity. This new openness becomes possible because you no longer operate from fear; you no longer move in response to someone else or something that is outside yourself: because you now have a centre of gravity that is yours – you have discovered your own dignity. And so you realize that the walls that you have built around yourself for protection are now a prison cell; but now the cell door is open, and you are free to go beyond. Sometimes the one bestowing and the one receiving cannot distinguish who is bestowing and who is receiving. It is rather, a mystery; but its expression is so vibrantly alive and joyful that it is a hymn of thanksgiving. This painting is a hymn of thanksgiving: an expression of the self-worth that Pissarro gifted to Cezanne, in 1873, inscribed with a flourish. Cezanne, with Hortense and baby Paul, had moved up to be close to Pissarro in late 1872: Pontoise was a small village around the bridge over the Oise, a lively town, with weekly markets and working barges on the river; it was the ideal mix of vibrant rural life and modern professionals (being just north west of the metropolis of Paris and recently linked by train). Auvers-sur-Oise, upstream, was quieter in a more rural setting, with houses clumped together along the river. Cezanne and Pissarro would often walk along the river between Pontoise and Auvers. It was a gentle place. Twenty years later, Van Gogh would take refuge here, from the asylum, painting the same scenes and staying with the good Dr Gachet. What a difference from Cezanne’s early phase we see in this painting – a much lighter palette of colours, an intensity described by focusing on these few cottages snuggled up to the hill with a little strip of blue (top left) inviting us to bow to the universe beyond; a spontaneity achieved by the hatching strokes of paint applied by brushes of individual daubs; an animation caused by making our eyes dance; and finally, the harmony of colours is held together, on the solid foundation of the central shape of a suggested “V” in the middle of the painting, created by the sloping roof of the house on the left next to the red roof, and the sloping garden wall on the right – it’s just lovely, and Cezanne knows it. He brings to fulfilment what he wants to do – he “realizes his impressions”, it’s complete. Thirty years later, in the attendance book of the exhibition celebrating the completion of Pissarro’s life, Cezanne would sign his condolences with the words: “Cezanne, pupil of Pissarro”.
Cezanne and Pissarro remind me of the student and mentor relationship of the famous Islamic poet Rumi and his mentor, Shams of Tabriz; after many conversations together, Rumi expressed their hymn of thanksgiving to the divine in these words:
There has never been beauty like yours.
Your face, your eyes, your presence.
We cannot decide which we love most,
Your gracefulness or your generosity.
I came with many knots in my heart,
Like the magician’s rope.
You undid them all at once.
I see now the splendour of the student
And that of the teacher’s art.
Rumi