Cezanne in a bowler hat FWN 479 1886 42 cm x 34 Private collection
The bowler hat was invented by the British as a helmet to protect the wearer from injury and pain. “Healing trauma involves recognizing, accepting, and moving through pain. ‘Clean pain’ is about choosing integrity over fear…The alternative paths of avoidance, blame or denial are paved with ‘dirty pain’: when people respond from their most wounded parts and choose ‘dirty pain’, they only create more of it for themselves, and for other people.” Resmaa Menakem – ‘My Grandmother’s Hands’. ‘Clean pain’ means that you acknowledge the pain, step back, and take some time to sit with the pain; this is very often hard to do, because our natural reaction is to fight, hide or flee. But, if we choose to fight, hide or flee (choose avoidance, blame or denial), we will create ‘dirty pain’ for ourselves and those around us.
Whatever else Cezanne knew, he knew his hats! His father Louis Auguste had made his fortune as a hatmaker. Named after the ‘Bowler’ brothers who designed it, in 1849, this new ‘iron hat’ was well suited not only for horse-riding and such ‘countryside’ pursuits but other more ‘modern’ dangerous pursuits like working and travelling on railways, in construction, and factories, and was ideal for this new industrial age. It was practical and hard-wearing, dashing and modern – and could be mass produced! Where Cezanne got it from in Provence, we shall probably never know!
Cezanne did a preparatory painting with the same hat, same posture and same stir; and these two are the only portraits with someone wearing a bowler hat that Cezanne painted. There are a number of photographs of Cezanne wearing the bowler, so he was obviously quite fond of it. The year of the painting, 1886, was the year both of the formalizing of his relationship with Hortense – their marriage was in April – and of his father’s passing, in October. Some commentators suggest that Cezanne might have acquired the bowler for one or both these occasions. I think it unlikely – the bowler was worn by workers, not worn by city-gents till the next century: it would have been seen as a helmet!
“No Cezannes had been seen on public display in Paris for more than ten years, until The House of the Hanged Man reappeared, ghostlike, at the Exposition Universelle of 1889.” Alex Danchev. Cezanne had removed himself from public exhibitions and Parisian social life. Spring 1886 was the time in Gardanne that Cezanne finally came to terms with trauma, and pain. Gardanne was an oasis for Cezanne, a place of healing, which he managed to achieve through clean pain. In this self-portrait, Cezanne doesn’t look back in anger, but as the ‘pictor semper virens’ – the ever-green painter. Cezanne wrote to Victor Chocquet – “I had a few vines, but untimely frosts came and cut the thread of hope. My wish had been, on the contrary, to see them flourish, just as I can only wish you success in what you planted, and a fine growth of vegetation: green being one of the most cheerful colours, which does the eye most good.”
Cezanne painted this self-portrait in the dark ochre of the earth, and, especially his beard, the green of vegetation. Evergreen trees, like the great pines Cezanne so loved, prefer warmer climates, and it was back to his home of Provence from the colder climes of Paris, that Cezanne now returned to centre his final stage of artistic maturity. Evergreens only shed their leaves gradually, not all at once; like Cezanne they work slowly, and achieve their renewal by gradual and methodical means. They retain water and survive on low level of nutrients, protected by harder leaves. They reinforce their own survival chances because their leaf and needle litter make it hard for other species to invade their territory. “Pictor Semper Virens”, painter evergreen – one of Cezanne’s favourite ways of ending a letter.
Cezanne continues: “I must tell you that I am still occupied with painting, and that there are treasures to be carried away in this region, which has not yet found an interpreter to match the nobility of the riches displayed”.
You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows downstream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.
Li Po
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