The Artist’s son in a red armchair FWN 465 1881/2 34cm x 37.5
It seems pretty obvious to me that Cezanne painted this portrait of his son Paul for his tenth birthday, 4th Jan 1882. Cezanne was with Hortense and young Paul in the early months of the year, and the winter in L’Estaque was particularly bad that year. Renoir would join them in February, but catch pneumonia, and be out of action for a couple of weeks. It’s reminiscent of the portrait of Hortense, in the red armchair of 1877; that armchair was in Paris, a rather bigger one and fuller red, with tassels on the arms. This armchair was the one in L’Estaque, in the ‘holiday’ cottage where they hid away, still secret from Cezanne Louis-Auguste. Young Paul is now at school in nearby Gardanne. He looks more like his mother.
It’s a good gentle portrait, and Cezanne has I think been at pains to capture a close likeness of his son. For this painting, he has abandoned his ‘constructivist’ style, and is not experimenting; he’s not concentrating on developing his art - there are no little hatches of paint, and no building up of the painting. Rather, Cezanne uses thin washes of colours, the face of his son, lovingly moulded. The young Paul often helped his father with his drawings and paintings: splashing charcoal, watercolour, and oil-paint all over Cezanne’s efforts to be creatively disciplined.
Some ten years later, it was Ambroise Vollard who would not be too impressed by the lack of discipline applied in the Cezanne household. Vollard was the first professional art-dealer to realize the potential of the Impressionist and modern art movement for making money. In the late 1880’s, while studying law, he had paid for his studies by working as a clerk for an art-dealer in Paris. The 1880’s saw the birth and growth of the department store, and the emerging nouveau riche gloried in the national prestige of the great Parisian stores. Indeed, Zola set one of his novels ‘Au Bonhear des Dames’ in the typical department store, as a symbol of the new technology that was both improving society, and devouring it!
What’s more, there was a new art-form on the block: poster art! Jules Cheret used his ‘three-stone lithographic process’ to be able to produce a wide spectrum of colours; and so, low-cost colour posters became a reality!
Vollard managed to buy all Cezanne’s works stored in Pere Tanguy’s art-supplies shop in Montmartre – some 150 paintings. (this was how Cezanne used to pay for oils and materials – leaving his paintings in exchange). Vollard understood not only the direction in which art was going, but also the direction in which commerce was too! His motto – buy low, sell high – would cash in on the newly found wealth of the booming middle class. Still, he bemoaned the fact that Cezanne had let his young son help him draw all over a few of the works!
Vollard made a mint on his motto; Cezanne was never in it for the money: whether he had very little, as in the early years, or an abundance, when he inherited a third of his father’s estate in 1886, he was always afraid that it would be a distraction from his painting. Cezanne worked hard at his painting – early start, six days of the week, late finish. He tried to keep himself to himself as much as possible, so he was emotionally detached from anything that would block his artistic expression. But with Hortence and young Paul, he could relax.
Cezanne cherished his son; and certainly, watching him grow, helped Cezanne mature: Cezanne painted his son’s portrait seven times and Hortence nigh on twenty times in the 1880s. In this decade, Cezanne would learn how to relate to his authoritarian father with equanimity rather than rage; he would learn how to accept Zola’s disappointment in him with reserve; and by the end of the decade Cezanne would be teaching his young son Paul how to deal with art dealers like Ambroise Vollard.
In this, his fourth decade, Cezanne would learn the value of things.
How delightful it is to watch a son and his father grow together.
in that serene and blessed mood
in which the affections gently lead us on
until, the breath of this corporeal frame
and even the motion of our human blood is suspended
and we are laid asleep in body
and become a living soul:
while, with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony
and the deep power of joy
we see into the life of things.
Wordsworth, 1770 – 1850
“Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey”
Wordsworth has just returned from supporting the uprising of the French Revolution, and opens the poem with the famous lines:
“Five long years have past; five summers, with the length of five long winters, and again I hear these waters, rolling from their mountain springs…”