L’Allée á Chantilly FWN 244 1888 84.7 cm x 64.8 Toledo Museum, Ohio
This is a typical lovely Cezanne, back in the north of France, away from the pounding sun of Provence, in the lush density of the crisscrossing bridal paths of the extensive forest of Chantilly: the constructive brushstrokes defining the leaves of the chestnut trees, the colours of earth splashed with reflected green, the blue of the roof of the chateau mirrored in the shadow of the tree across the path, and at various points through the leaves of the chestnut trees to the open sky. The bridal path meets the chateau at its upper floor, so as to continue the spatial depth of two receding triangular rooftops. It is enclosed and spacious, balanced and harmonious, and complete.
L’Allée á Chantilly FWN 245 1888 81 cm x 65 National Gallery, London
Here, we would not know that the trees were chestnut trees nor really I suspect would we know that there was a chateau at the end of the avenue, if we hadn’t seen Cezanne’s first ‘Avenue at Chantilly’. The brushstrokes of the trees, in constructive style, are clumped together in bands of colour. The saplings in the foreground form the invitation into the repeated nested bell-shapes through the dense foliage beyond to the buildings shrouded in nested foliage too. The round orbit of blue at the top of the painting allows us breathing space in an otherwise claustrophobic avenue. The horizontals of blue shadows on the ground, and small wooden fence are eased by the horizontal bridal path traversing the whole painting. It is enclosed and spacious, balanced and harmonious, and complete.
L’Allée á Chantilly FWN 246 1888 82 cm x 66 Phillips, New York
Wow – this is almost a ‘sous bois’ painting – one of Cezanne’s later paintings deep within the undergrowth! It has the constructive brushstrokes in the foliage of the leaves of the trees, but here the strokes are not grouped together in colours, but seemingly more random. The bell-shape is created by one thin single branch arching across the top of the canvass, dropping dramatically to the opening beyond. The bridal path is a riot of colour, with two rectangles of blue on the left receding into the opening; the deep blue traversing the whole of the canvass in the immediate foreground, balances the airiness of the gentler colours at the top of the canvass. Quite a bit of the canvass is left without paint. Yet, it is enclosed and spacious, balanced and harmonious, and complete.
It often takes us such a long time to understand the implications of a new idea – it’s something to do with our habitual ways of living, which often almost unnoticeably come to dominate our thinking, and thereby, confine the fullness of our understanding; sometimes we want to avoid the challenge of change; we think auto-pilot is easier. But just as importantly, some ideas are not single, random ‘ideas’, but are the precursor of, the opening for, a new way of understanding our world. It took a long time for it to sink in, that the critique of both the idea of ‘rational man’ and the over-emphasis on the importance of science, might just be liberating and enable us to explore other dimensions of human existence. It was only in 1983 that Howard Gardner wrote his book claiming that, instead of thinking of high IQ as the apex of human endeavour, we might fare better if we sought to understand ourselves as having multiple ‘intelligences’, ways of knowing: cognitive, yes, but also physical, emotional, spiritual or existential, moral, artistic, musical and so on – as many intelligences as the types of things we can say about ourselves!
At this time in Cezanne’s development, we notice that he begins to paint the same motif a number of times. Yes, he did paint the same motif a number of times before – for instance, in the 1860’s he painted his uncle Dominique as a monk and as a lawyer, in a turban and in profile, and so on. And yes, he certainly painted views of L’Estaque, looking out over the Bay of Marseilles, on quite a few occasions. But there’s something different here: we know that Cezanne spent some five months in Chantilly, in 1888. So we know he painted these three paintings ‘as a series’. Question is: what was he up to?
There is some dispute about which order these paintings were painted, but the last painting has always been accepted as the last; and there is general consensus now that the order is as I have copied them above. Pavel Machotka, this time in an article in the book “Cezanne and Paris”, would have us trace in these three Chantilly paintings, Cezanne’s development to a more abstract style. Indeed, the title of his article somewhat gives it away: ‘From the landscapes of Northern France to the beginnings of Cubism’. Mochotka writes: ‘(the) series of three pictures in 1888 at Chantilly forms the real beginning of the late style…In these three canvasses Cezanne represents one of the bridal paths running through the forest belonging to the Chateau at Chantilly; their common feature is not the Chateau itself, but the painter’s position in the centre of the path. I present them here in the order in which I believe they were painted (same as above), following a progression which begins with the style typical of 1888 and ends with an abstract and original conception.’ Generally, I have no quibble with his analysis – except maybe that it’s not so much the ‘painter’s position’ that they have in common rather than the Chateau, but that what they have in common is the avenue of trees. (this rather depends on whether you think ‘the painter’s position’ is ‘within’ the painting or not! It should be noted that Cezanne is not changing his position for each painting as he paints it: the difference is not that he paints his Chantilly motif from different perspectives; indeed, these three paintings employ traditional perspective!)
I believe Cezanne was beginning to understand that his own artistic development passed through stages which he was starting to recognize as whole within themselves. Each stage could be expressed on a canvass that was enclosed and spacious, balanced and harmonious, and complete. Indeed, as he looks at the line of development of his own artistic intelligence, he can now identify quite distinct stages, which he expresses in the best way he knows – in three distinct paintings of the avenue at Chantilly. It would be a mistake to expect Cezanne to express in words, what I have written above: the framework of our understanding had not yet come ‘online’ within human consciousness for the era of Cezanne. But with the benefit of hindsight, we can legitimately position these three paintings of an avenue in Chantilly within the beautiful unfolding of evolutionary consciousness: the appreciation of the nesting effect of wholes in our fractal world.
You've travelled up ten thousand steps in your searching;
So many long days in the archives, copying, copying.
The gravity of tradition and the profundity of thought
make heavy baggage.
Here! I've picked you a bunch of wildflowers:
their meaning is the same
but they're much easier to carry
Hsu Yun
Contemporary of Cezanne
(adapted)