Gardanne vue horizontale FWN 224 1885 65.9 cm x 99
Cezanne painted Gardanne three times: morning horizontally, midday vertically and afternoon round to the west. “As a group, these works document a 180⁰ circuit around the village through the green fields and copses on its outskirts. It is as if Cezanne were carefully rotating the motif around in his head,” and heart, I might add! Tate Catalogue 1996. It is as if he was spinning round….summer 1885 to spring 1886 would be for Cezanne such a time of spinning….
Gardanne (Afternoon) FWN 223 1886 92 cm x 73
Something happened in La Roche-Guyon: we don’t really know what. From one of Cezanne’s letters to Zola, it sounds like he was spinning in love – so in love with someone that he drafted a letter asking to meet. He seems to have got a negative reply. So disturbed did he end up that he ran away from the family weekend with the Renoirs, left Hortense and young Paul, left his painting of La Roche-Guyon unfinished, and skedaddled to stay with Zola.
Zola was pretty busy, and though he received Cezanne with the generosity of an old friend, he was pre-occupied with the release of his latest novel. The novel was about an artist who did not achieve his potential, and could not ever get to finish his paintings: he ends up hanging himself in front of the last unfinished masterpiece. The Impressionists as a whole were not at all happy with Zola’s latest novel: Monet, their leader, spoke with Pissarro, and ended up sending a letter to Zola pointing out the damage that could be done to their reputation by the publication of a book which ended in such horrible failure. It didn’t help that the artist in the book was called Claude, and that at one time Monet had been so depressed because he could not provide for this family that he had considered suicide. Most people though, thought Zola’s book referred to Cezanne. Cezanne was by this time in hiding back in Aix, trying to keep a low profile. Zola and Cezanne would never meet again.
Cezanne’s father thought it right and proper to open all letters that came to the house: he had first suspected Cezanne had a partner and son when he opened a letter to Cezanne from M Chocquet, but Cezanne bluffed and lied his way out of it. Some years later a letter arrived addressed to “Mde Cezanne” which turned out to be from Cezanne’s partner’s father, addressed to his daughter with the understandable title “Mde Cezanne”. Constant angry rows made life unbearable for Cezanne; what’s more, his sisters treated Hortense with scorn, and made life a misery for Cezanne. Cezanne moved out of the family house of Jas de Bouffan, and in with his wife and young son, who had returned from La Roche-Guyon to their little holiday cottage in L’Estaque, where he had painted for some twenty years; the cottage was in fact Cezanne’s mother’s retreat!
A second letter arrived, this one from Pere Tanguy, the owner of the art supply shop in Montmartre asking Cezanne to pay his bills, as Pere Tanguy was being threatened with eviction by his landlord if he did not settle his rent. The total was some 4000 francs.
Cezanne’s default setting was to run away and hide; and he justified this in his own mind by thinking that he wanted no distractions from painting – but, in truth, it was no way to live. It just all got too much for Cezanne; and it was I think what we would nowadays acknowledge as mental health distress. But these nine months in Gardanne proved therapeutic: that time and space, would reconfigure the mental distress into an opportunity.
Cezanne’s mother it was who gently lulled her husband into acceptance of the situation; Auguste was no angel himself in his youth, but was upset that his artist son would not admit that he had a family, even when the evidence was there in writing. There was that certain unspoken disappointment in the father whose son does not live up to his entrepreneurial expectations; mirrored in the son who feels guilty and angry that he cannot live up to his father’s expectations. But at least Auguste now knew. And yes, when the anger had cooled, he increased Cezanne’s allowance to provide for the small family. I suspect he probably settled his son’s bills with Pere Tanguy too. It was the beginning of a time when the relationship between father and son would develop, not into love, but at least a beginning – away from father and son towards two independent adults. And that was timely and good, for Louis-Auguste Cezanne would pass away within six months.
Encouraged by Hortense, I’m sure, the three moved out of his mother’s cottage to the village of Gardanne; they were now able to rent a small flat, and the young Paul was able to attend school on a regular basis. Cezanne became fascinated with the village, and started to paint again. And, being with Hortense and young Paul openly, and starting to paint again, in a place of their own, was in fact the new beginning Cezanne needed.
Hortense Cezanne aux hortensias FWN 1743 1885 31.8 cm x 48.3
He would never paint again at L’Estaque. He would never meet or speak again with Zola. He would never argue again with his father. He would never again let financial matters overwhelm him. He would never again let himself be so emotionally disturbed. He would never again be upset by criticism. He would never again be bound by the little taches of his own constructivist style.
In that space around Gardanne, he had somehow found an inner strength, neither fearful nor aggressive, neither blaming nor shaming; he found that he could live like the fool on the hill, who sees the sun going down, and the eyes in his head see the world spinning round….
Gardanne vue vertical FWN 222 1886 80 cm x 64
Picasso
“The discovery of his work (Cezanne’s) overturned everything. I wasn’t alone in suffering from shock. There was a battle to be fought against much of what we knew, what we had tended to respect, admire or love. In Cezanne’s work, we should not only see a new pictorial construction but also – too often forgot – a new moral intimation of space”
George Braque, 1882 to 1963