La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue de chemin de Valcros FWN 127 1878/9 58cm x 72
It was to be the start of their relationship. They had passed each other before, but not noticed. This one time, he had been sitting on a train, coming home, and he saw her; she said nothing, but simply drew his attention. And for the first time, he turned towards her; and he was stunned; and something spoke silently with subtle strength deep in his soul.
All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other –
Only the mountain and I.
Li Po
Poet of the Tang Dynasty, 701 to 762
Cezanne wrote on the 14th April 1878 a letter to Zola in which he describes the stunning motif he glimpsed as he sat on the train going to see his small family, hidden away off the coast of Marseilles. He had lived in the shadow of the mountain for half his life almost without noticing her – certainly without apprehending the significance she would have for his sense of awe, his expressiveness, and his continuing artistic and spiritual development. Cezanne had been accompanied on the train journey by his old teacher, now the Professor of Art at the Granet Museum of Art in Aix-en-Provence: Monsieur Gibert. Cezanne had spontaneously expressed his awe at the stunning view afforded by the train journey; Monsieur Gibert had not been so impressed: “the lines sway too much”. He did not mean the train lines, but the ‘lines’ of the possible motif – the road, the aquaduct, the mountain range – all the horizontals. Cezanne explains to Zola: “people like Monsieur Gibert see well enough, but through a professor’s eyes…..he says some very sensible and laudatory things, but always from a technical point of view”. It maybe that the good Professor was trying to help Cezanne develop his technical ability – he was certainly not alone in thinking that Cezanne needed help in that direction; Cezanne, somewhat unusually, keeps his cool and listens to his old teacher respectfully: “I was very good” he writes to Zola “since I don’t know how to be clever”; but Cezanne can’t help musing, with a touch of bewilderment: “And yet, there’s no doubt that in a town of 20,000 souls, Gibert is the one who devotes himself most and best to art”.
It has been suggested that nowadays there is a three stage development that pertains to individuals and societies: role, soul and whole. So, we often see relationships built on the roles that people do within the relationship; the marriage relationship involves many such roles, which though they may be changing and developing, are nonetheless essentially based on the roles that people perform. As people live longer lives, that span long after the birds have flown the nest, we see relationships becoming based on being ‘soul-mates’, rather than simply ‘role-mates’. Monsieur Gilbert saw things like a professor; he understood life through the role that he has aspired to, achieved and fulfilled to the best of his ability. And Cezanne recognizes this; but wants to go beyond the role of an artist, to something more soulful. Cezanne’s journey starts with awe and wonder, not roles and responsibility. Monsieur Gibert had to delineate the lines, and control the outcome; Cezanne had to let the awe run free, and just go with the colour. It was a journey in companionship that would occupy Cezanne for the rest of his life, before he and his soul-mate la montagne Saint-Victoire would be ‘whole-mates’.
I can’t leave it there without mentioning the colours of this impressionist painting – so delightful and intense; look at the two bundles of colours moving away from the left-side sloping roof of the manor house, up towards the mountain itself. I just love it! If you haven’t got a fancy phone, have a close up look at: FWN 127 https://www.cezannecatalogue.com/catalogue/entry.php?id=393 – the magnified view of the brushwork tapestry of rich and varied hue, an everlasting vision of an ever changing view….sorry, I get carried away!
You ask me why I live in the presence of the sacred mountain
I smile silently, serene of mind
Peach petals wisp on mountain streams
over earth and sky beyond, for all beings kind.
Li Po
Poet of the Tang Dynasty, adapted