Hortense Fiquet Cezanne (FWN432, 1873-4)

Madame Cezanne leaning on her elbow                 FWN 432             1873/74              46cm x 38

Paul Cezanne painted 24 oil paintings in 1873; just one of them was a portrait – this one, of his partner, Hortense Fiquet Cezanne. Their great grandson, Philippe Cezanne, wrote for the exhibition “Cezanne and Paris” in 2012: “I cannot end this piece without paying tribute to the two people who were closest to Cezanne and of whom he was fondest: my great grandmother, Hortense, and my grandfather, Paul.” This Paul, Hortense and Paul Cezanne’s son, was born in 1872. Hortense (1850 -1922) was born in the village of Saligney, Besancon in the Jura; in the 1860’s the whole family moved to Paris to start a new life; but the urban Paris was just as tough a life for the poor as the rural Besancon: her sister passed away, and then her mother, when Hortense was 17. Her father returned to the Jura, but Hortense remained in Paris. She worked as a seamstress, and bookbinder- in those days these were not two separate occupations, for cloth-backed books required sewing. And in the evenings she did some modelling as well. She fled Paris for L’Estaque with Cezanne to escape the bloody slaughter of the Franco-Prussian war which ended in Paris, returning in peacetime with their little family to join Pissarro to the west of Paris in the village of Pontoise. 1873 saw the start of something new: a period of peace for France, as the country recovered from the end of Empire and civil war, and a period of bonding for the Cezanne family, in the gentle countryside of Pontoise and Auvers, and the simple and beneficent company of the Pissarro family. 

                                                                                                                                    Occasionally it happens that I am present at the gathering of a group of nursing friends, who all trained together nigh on forty years ago: they have all gone their own paths since those formative years at the London School of Nursing, and have led very diverse lives and had very different experiences; but they still remain a group of friends so close that even though they may only meet once a year or so, it seems they have never been apart! Such is the power of formative years together; especially when the formation is focused on understanding and appreciating the whole person.

And it is I believe, this depth of presence that Hortense and Cezanne experienced in their formative, bonding years in the early 1870’s. It would allow them through-out their lives to be at a distance but not apart; it would allow them to stay a family of three, dividing their resources equally but pursuing their own life paths; it would allow them to communicate deeply without saying much at all; it would allow them to respect each other as a person not because of a role or status.

In this painting, Hortense is twenty-three years old; her son is just a year old; she wears the dress she made herself a few years ago, before she gave birth. It’s a simple scene: times are hard – the family lives off a small allowance while her husband spends his time painting. Hortense sits upright, and resolute; Cezanne paints Hortense using green, brown, pink and red, but predominantly blue – Cezanne’s colour for spaciousness, and dignity.                         

John Berger, in the book accompanying the TV series “Ways of Seeing” of the 1970’s, suggests that in the history of European oil painting “a man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power that he embodies. If the promise is large and credible, his presence is striking…the object of his power is always exterior to the man. By contrast, a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself….men act, women appear! (woman) becomes an object of vision.”  I believe Cezanne seeks not to represent Hortense as an object, but rather to give Hortense a presence that is her own.

                                                            For a few decades more, life would remain hard for Hortense as she kept her and her son hidden from all except Cezanne’s mother; only to be treated with suspicion when the whole Cezanne family found out. And she would continue to be treated harshly by subsequent art critics. It has taken till modern times for Hortense to receive any kind of truthful, non- sexist appraisal of her life with Cezanne: in 2002 Susan Sidlauskas is able to conclude her book on “Cezanne’s Other” with these words: “(Hortense) is however, indisputably, stubbornly, there, over and over….by being there, Hortense Fiquet Cezanne sat with her husband, and became his art.” I think they had a relationship not based on what they did, but who they were, as whole independent persons.

“When I encounter a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to her, then she is not a thing among things nor does she consist of things. She is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, nor a loose bundle of named qualities. She is Thou and fills the firmament.”

Martin Buber

The gift of self-worth (FWN 77, 1873)

La Maison du pere Lacroix, Auvers-sur-Oise          FWN 77       1873     61.5 cm x 51

Sometimes it happens that someone has the honour of bestowing on another human being, the gift of self-worth. What an honour that is; and what a gift to receive!               namaste                 There’s a reciprocity, a bond. This bond is not a familial one; it is not even one of friendship. Neither is it that someone teaches something to someone else; it is not the giving of a skill. There’s an openness, a positivity. This new openness becomes possible because you no longer operate from fear; you no longer move in response to someone else or something that is outside yourself: because you now have a centre of gravity that is yours – you have discovered your own dignity. And so you realize that the walls that you have built around yourself for protection are now a prison cell; but now the cell door is open, and you are free to go beyond. Sometimes the one bestowing and the one receiving cannot distinguish who is bestowing and who is receiving. It is rather, a mystery; but its expression is so vibrantly alive and joyful that it is a hymn of thanksgiving. This painting is a hymn of thanksgiving: an expression of the self-worth that Pissarro gifted to Cezanne, in 1873, inscribed with a flourish.                                                                                            Cezanne, with Hortense and baby Paul, had moved up to be close to Pissarro in late 1872: Pontoise was a small village around the bridge over the Oise, a lively town, with weekly markets and working barges on the river; it was the ideal mix of vibrant rural life and modern professionals (being just north west of the metropolis of Paris and recently linked by train). Auvers-sur-Oise, upstream, was quieter in a more rural setting, with houses clumped together along the river. Cezanne and Pissarro would often walk along the river between Pontoise and Auvers. It was a gentle place. Twenty years later, Van Gogh would take refuge here, from the asylum, painting the same scenes and staying with the good Dr Gachet.                                                                                                                                                               What a difference from Cezanne’s early phase we see in this painting – a much lighter palette of colours, an intensity described by focusing on these few cottages snuggled up to the hill with a little strip of blue (top left) inviting us to bow to the universe beyond; a spontaneity achieved by the hatching strokes of paint applied by brushes of individual daubs; an animation caused by making our eyes dance; and finally, the harmony of colours is held together, on the solid foundation of the central shape of a suggested “V” in the middle of the painting, created by the sloping roof of the house on the left next to the red roof, and the sloping garden wall on the right – it’s just lovely, and Cezanne knows it. He brings to fulfilment what he wants to do – he “realizes his impressions”, it’s complete.                   Thirty years later, in the attendance book of the exhibition celebrating the completion of Pissarro’s life, Cezanne would sign his condolences with the words: “Cezanne, pupil of Pissarro”.     

Cezanne and Pissarro remind me of the student and mentor relationship of the famous Islamic poet Rumi and his mentor, Shams of Tabriz; after many conversations together, Rumi expressed their hymn of thanksgiving to the divine in these words:

There has never been beauty like yours.

Your face, your eyes, your presence.

We cannot decide which we love most,

Your gracefulness or your generosity.

I came with many knots in my heart,

Like the magician’s rope.

You undid them all at once.

I see now the splendour of the student

And that of the teacher’s art.

Rumi



The beginning of the end of Empire (FWN 613, 1870)

The murder         FWN 613          1870/1     65cm x 80          Liverpool Walker Gallery

Sometimes it’s difficult to comprehend what happens: an unfolding of the events and facts of the matter just do not seem sufficient; even when you know all there is to know, you’re still left shaking your head in incredulity and sadness at the belligerence of men. Such were the events of 1870, that ended not only the self-proclaimed Empire of Napoleon III of France, but also began the beginning of the end of Empire itself in the history of humankind.  A telegram was intercepted, and altered by the Prussian Chancellor, head of the federation of North German states, and thereafter sent anonymously to the French newspapers, who published it the following day. Twenty thousand Parisians marched the streets demanding war in response to the insult contained in the fake news; on 16th July, the French Parliament debated, and voted – and the Emperor of France did what the Prussian Chancellor had hoped he would do - he declared war on Prussia on 19th July 1870. By September, French ministers were having to draft makeshift new armies of 500,000 peasants and labourers from the countryside, but they were never going to match the well-trained and well-armed Prussian troops.The Prussians defeated the French armies and captured the Emperor on the Alsace-Lorraine border in North East France; the Communards declared a New Republic in the name of the people of France, and blockaded Paris, to defend themselves against the Prussians, and against the Emperor’s men. On 28th Jan 1871, with thousands dead, Paris starving, the French Emperor in chains, and all of Northern France controlled by the Prussian armies, the newly formed French “Government of National Defence” negotiated armistice with Prussia; the final slaughter of the Paris communards is brutally enacted by French and Prussian troops during the week of 21st to 28th May 1871, as the Paris Commune Rebellion is brutally crushed.

There’s been some dispute about what this painting represents: Zola’s third novel and his most successful one so far was published in 1868 and tells the gruesome story of a sordid affair, murder and eventual double suicide – not the kind of lighthearted book to read on your day off, but remember, there was no TV then! Zola propounded a theory of “naturalism”- he wrote all his novels to ‘prove’ that human destiny was determined by ‘nature’ rather than by ‘nurture’; what happens to us depends more on our biological and therefore psychological make-up than by our upbringing and personal development. Many commentators think Cezanne’s ‘The Murder’ is a graphic for Zola’s novel; I think not: Zola’s victim is not stabbed, but drowned and she is Algerian. Most art commentators think Cezanne’s painting dates from the early 1870’s – so I think it references the violence and dark dealings of the 1870/71 Franco-Prussian war, and especially the civil war of Empire and Paris Commune: the murder is within the family.

Within seventy years, Europe would be at war twice again. In the history of human development, this seventy year period seems, we hope, to mark the end of the history of Empire; that time in human history extending from the Persian, Assyrian and Babylonian Empires to the British Empire, when the dominant values and organizing principles of society were based on the power of individual men, the subordination of peoples, and the maintenance of social order by force. Great Britain seems to have the dubious honour of being the last in the line of 2500 years of domination through Empire.

Hallelujay, hallelujay,

Hallelujay, hallelujay,

Leonard Cohen

Trees (FWN 145, 1879-80)

 Melting Snow at Fontainebleau                 FWN 145             1879/80              76.6cm x 100.6

Sometimes we don’t see things that are right in front of us; they just don’t impinge on our consciousness. The mind is so adept at filtering out stuff, in its effort to keep us focused on the task at hand; if something does not pose a threat, then the mind simply ignores it. Trees pose no threat.

Cezanne did not paint a tree till he was well into his thirties. Yes, you could hardly be a painter of landscapes in Provence without painting trees in the background of your work - but precisely: they were in the background - Cezanne never painted a tree as the motif of the painting till later in life! This particular painting is a copy of a photograph! The winter was so bad that year, that no-one could wander far from home because of the snow, and Cezanne like everyone else, was housebound.

In 1975, a scientist named Broeker forecast what the rise in global temperature would mean by the time we reached 2020; and he was pretty much spot on with his prediction! As a young man, at that time, engaged in all kinds of campaigning for social justice, I did not take on board his prediction - it did not impinge on my consciousness until some forty years later!

This is the last blog of Cezanne’s first phase of development - his ‘balsy’ phase, ‘maniere couillarde’, ending in 1870, when he was 31 years old.

Spiral Dynamics Integral Theory provides us with the tools for understanding human development more thoroughly, on all kinds of levels. On the level of evolutionary human development, 1870 can be used as the date when the Traditional Era lost its position as top-dog to the Modern Era: The traditional worldview of stability with unchanging, absolute codes of living provided by religion; a hierarchy of social order and control; a sense of a higher authority, and the importance of loyalty and duty; The Modern Era of a worldview encouraging change and creativity; the value of policy tested by scientific method rather than blind faith; values judged by the good of the outcome, rather than the interpretation of holy texts; values of pragmatism and materialism. Each human Evolutionary Era seems to have a Great Work that it must fulfil for human development to carry on to the next Era. By 1870, the values of this Modern Era had achieved what no faith-path, no empire, no social organisation had ever achieved in the history of humanity - the abolition of slavery, throughout the known world: the promise of a different way of living together had been enshrined in law.

For France, after many decades of conflict, 1870 saw the final demise of Empire, and the acceptance of democracy as the new power for social organisation and the promise of a new way of making decisions together.

For Cezanne, his twenties were a time when he was struggling with himself. Often dark and deep, brash, antagonistic and over-confident, and yet anxious and withdrawn, uncertain and moody, Cezanne had yet to find his own power. Soon, he will be able to take his seat at the table of life, set his own intentionality, and ground himself in the promise he knew he had within: and what magnificent trees he would then paint!

Trees pose no threat; it’s we humans that pose the threat. Perhaps the Great Work of our Era is to live together in harmony with this earth, for that is where our promise lies.

Whose woods these are I think I know 
his house is in the village though; 
He will not see me stopping here 
to watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer 
to stop without a farmhouse near 
between the woods and frozen lake 
the darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake 
to ask if there is some mistake. 
The only other sound's the sweep 
of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. 
But I have promises to keep, 
and miles to go before I sleep. 
and miles to go before I sleep. --
Robert Frost

May I end with an ancient ancestral blessing:

Walk tall as the trees,                    

 live strong as the mountains,                                                                                        

be gentle as the spring winds,                                                                                                         

keep the warmth of the summer sun in your heart                                                                  

and the Great Spirit will always be with you.

The summer of ’66 (FWN 42, 1866)

The ferry at Bonnieres                    FWN42                 1866     38cm x 61

Cezanne spent from May to August of 1866 on the other bank of the Seine from Bonnieres at Bennecourt, overlooking the ferry; he stayed at the local inn, run by Mr and Mrs Dumont, who seem to have delighted in offering space for artists, writers and other creatives. Cezanne needed a rest - hey, who cares if you have to ‘borrow’ 60 francs from the up-and-coming writer named Zola; who cares if the Paris Salon refuses your submissions; who cares if your best friend writer says “Paul is working well; I have much hope in him. But still, we expect him to be rejected for another 10 years!” Cezanne was doing what he liked – painting all day, chilled, and with mates coming up from Paris every weekend!                                                                                                                                                      In 1852, the new House of Commons on the banks of the Thames in London had installed the latest technology - gas lighting. It was a major boost for the Gas Industry. In France, the French entrepreneur J B Roux had developed his gas works at the same time; and by 1880, there were 1000 gas works through-out France; France had even started exporting its new technology.                                                                                                                                               In this painting, Cezanne has two symbols vying for ascendancy: the chimney of the local gas works and the church steeple. In December 1864 the Pope had published a whole list of 80 heresies of the modern era (The Syllabus of Errors); I imagine Cezanne and his mates, sitting looking over the river at chimney and steeple, discussing and arguing, over a bottle of vin rouge de la maison, the future of these clashing symbols - religion and science. The Syllabus of Errors, the Pope’s critique of the Modern Era, represents the call for things to be unchanged in the face of scientific and technological development; a cry to remain in the Era of traditional values of belonging and closed community, but under a system of dominatory hierarchy and fixed, assigned roles, in which the Church has a central part, and spirituality is defined by religious adherence. The gas chimney represents the call of democratic power sharing, and change, but under a system which would become Western capitalism, and fluid, market-induced roles, in which Church influence would wane to insignificance, and spirituality would free itself from traditional forms of religious adherence. Humanity, as ever and now, is challenged to grow up; include the gold of the past, and move forward.

In this phase of his work, till 1870, Cezanne would continue to paint landscapes with some signs of increasing industrialization, and include people as well. Eventually, the industrial motifs would drop away, and he would cease to paint people in landscapes. This ferry painting is one of the first where Cezanne takes an interest in the landscape itself, rather than a mere backdrop for scenes of historic and allegoric significance (“Romantic painting”).

“I am seeing splendid things here, and will have to decide only to paint in the open”, he wrote to Zola, and, thus, in that magic moment, Cezanne accepted his calling: an invitation into the mystery of the ordinary was welling up in his soul.

Sit some time, and be still

be the pulse in your fingertips

hear the song of the colours around you

know the beauty of ordinary things.

The self-made man (FWN 55, 1868-70)

Alley of chestnut trees and pool at the Jas de Bouffan    FWN 55    1868-70       44cm x 37

Some scholars date this painting a year or two later, and you can see why: the different tones of the greens, the lighter palette, the shimmering effect created by the way the paint is applied, the more formal design. Whatever the exact date, it marks a turning point in Cezanne’s development as he moves towards the lighter and more colourful palette of the impressionists. I like this avenue of chestnuts, but I’m not sure why: the painting grows on you, despite the rather strange vertical green of the lower right; and it’s a painting that is often exhibited, and one that’s often in books about Cezanne. I think it’s more by association: we had chestnut trees at school, and I remember eating the nuts; and there’s quite a few Chestnut Trees that line the streets of Paris.

“Social distinctions can only be based on common utility” - Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, article 1, 1789. One of the most profound insights to blossom out of the Era of human development that ended with the Industrial Revolution of the 1800’s was the idea, and belief, that there are fundamental rights that accrue to all persons simply by the fact that they are human beings. Everybody has these rights, not by being able to pay for them, not by being rich and famous, not because of wealth, capital or income, not by being intelligent and knowledgeable, not because they belong to this or that family, not because they belong to this or that religion, not because of their skin, not because of their race, not because of anything like that: simply because they are human beings. In a Republic, there is no justification for social distinctions, except to enhance the common good. Wow - this was a major step forward in the expressed values of human development; but, the reality of the transition from Monarchy to Republic would require a Revolution.

In the aftermath of the revolution in 1798, France was bubbling with various factions seeking to direct the future of the country. Times were hard in the young Republic: “The most striking fact of the day was the misery of the industrial proletariat. Despite the growth of the economy, or perhaps in part because of it, and because, as well, of the vast rural exodus owing to both population growth and increasing agricultural productivity, workers crowded into the urban slums. The working day was long, and the wages were very low. A new urban misery emerged, more visible, more shocking, and in some respects, even more extreme than the rural misery of the Old Regime” (under the Monarchy): Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty. By 1849, Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of the real Napoleon!), with the help of the banking financiers, was elected the President of the Republic, and in 1851, he went on to seize dictatorial power, declaring himself the ‘Emperor of France’ with the words: “though my principles are Republican, Monarchy is best for France”. He initiated a period of what we might now call “quantitive easing” – infrastructure building work, (and imperial foreign expansion - think China, Morocco, Vietnam…). And like the  ‘need’ for austerity, the ‘need’ for a monarchy silenced the general public…..for a while.

There was money in rabbit skins, and Cezanne’s father, Louis-Auguste, could smell it! The small town of his birth, Saint-Zacharie, wasn’t big enough for our Loius-Auguste: off to Paris at the age of 22 (1821), he trained as a hat-maker and hat salesman, and had a ‘liason’ with the boss’s wife. Four years later, he had his own hat business (with two partners) in Aix. Hats were big business – 470 men, and 240 women employed in hat making, and many associated activities, especially rabbit farming. Louis-Auguste effectively began speculating in rabbit furs: he lent money to farmers in hard times and charged interest (and if things went wrong, Uncle Dominique was a bailiff!). The hat business was so successful that they were able to expand, and in 1848, Louis Auguste and Joseph Cabassol, clerk, opened a bank.

The expansion generated by the Industrial Revolution created the milieu for a new strata of society to emerge: the entrepreneur. Cezanne’s father was such a guy - his own man, he had no time for the propertied rich, those whose wealth was derived from the capital they had inherited, and whose income derived from nothing more than the interest on the capital, on the rents they collected. He, on the other hand, had worked hard all his life; but more than that: he had taken risks. He had earned his income. This was justified because it contributed to the common good: he lent money to the farmers to rear the rabbits, he bought the rabbits off them, made the hats, and sold the hats to the townsfolk, who worked on the farms…a virtuous circle. Unlike the rich ‘rentier’ class, aloof from local people, he considered himself part and parcel of the local community, making it financially viable.

In 1859, Louis-Auguste Cezanne accepted a property in payment of debts accrued for 84,000 francs; on the outskirts of Aix, it was called Jas de Bouffan; though somewhat dilapidated, it was nevertheless a fitting residence for a successful entrepreneur, a man of the new bourgeoisie - living proof that the new Republican Era was better than the restrictions of Monarchy. Louis Auguste did not have much time for church on Sundays, but, if he had, he would have delighted in the new hymns being sung: (hymn from 1843)

Go, labour on: spend, and be spent,
Thy joy to do the Father’s will:
It is the way the Master went;
Should not the servant tread it still?

Besides generating opportunity for a new strata of people, entrepreneurs, the Industrial Revolution generated a new way of living: growth. Up until now, the growth of society had remained just above 0% for the last thousands of years: any population increases had always been nullified by wars and disasters, famine and disease; or had been matched by an increase in output - not so much due to new technology, but simply by the fact that there were more guys to do the work. The Industrial Revolution changed that with a vengeance: growth from 1870 onwards averaged 1.6%. “A society in which the growth rate is 0.1% per year, as in the Eighteenth Century, reproduces itself with little or no change from one generation to the next: the occupational structure is the same, as is the property structure. A society that grows at 1% per year, as the most advanced societies have done since the turn of the Nineteenth Century, is a society that undergoes deep and permanent change.” Thomas Piketty.

Every Era of human development brings its own dignity and disaster, its own crisis and opportunity.

“Just as a continually growing cancer eventually destroys its life-support systems by destroying its host, a continuously expanding global economy is slowly destroying its host – the Earth’s ecosystem” Lester Brown

Another revolution is called for….

Still life genre painting (FWN 709, 1867-9)

Green pot and tin kettle                 FWN 709             1867 – 69           63cm x 80

The soul of empires is the imposition of social order through dominator hierarchy, the pyramid of power. This soul permeates the whole structure – politics, culture, economics, and social life. And so, in the world-view of Europe at the time, paintings were classified in a hierarchy too, with the highest being graded by subject matter: The Emperor, a depiction of God, or a biblical scene would be right up there, and the excellence of the painting would be judged by the accuracy of the depiction. Right down the bottom of this particular hierarchy was still-life painting. Why would anybody want a painting of a French Golden Delicious Apple hung in their stately mansion!                               

Cezanne owes much to Manet and Pissarro for this painting: the knife jutting out over the edge of the table (designed to create the illusion of space between the objects on the table, and the canvass) is an old Manet trick, which Cezanne uses lots of times more in later paintings. Manet, of course, would have added a touch of class by including a brioche, or a whole salmon on the table; Cezanne, the Provencal peasant, sticks to the simple things of life! Cezanne had spent a few days at the invitation of Guillemet with a few of the crew, including Pissarro, who had just the year before finished a similar still-life. It is obvious that Cezanne copied the Pissarro painting. Cezanne had done this before; indeed Pissarro encouraged Cezanne to copy so as to develop his style. More generally, the Impressionists moved away from inanimate still life painting, where-as Cezanne continued producing them: nigh on 200 still lifes throughout his life – 12 in the 1860’s, 75 odd in the 1870’s, 40 odd in the 1880’s and another 70 or so in the last 15 years of his life.                

It was in January 1906 (Cezanne died on 23rd Oct ’06) that Roger Fry, the famous artist, art critic and writer, saw this painting and was convinced that Cezanne was a genius.  It was Roger Fry who would be responsible for bringing the genius of Cezanne’s work to the UK. Fry was born in 1866, and went to Paris in 1892 to study art (his first degree in the UK was in biology) Strangely, Cezanne and Roger Fry never met. Indeed Fry was, up until he saw this painting, rather dismissive of any of Cezanne’s paintings, and the Impressionist movement as a whole. Fry saw the paintings over a good 10 year period, but dismissed them. Then, the light dawned, and he loved them! Great tracts have been written to explain why this should be the case – stuff like, well, he never visited the right gallery, he was interested in other painters, and so on – somehow, not convincing stuff; and it seems to me that if we examine it through the lens of Integral Dynamics, we can have a more satisfactory explanation: at each level of development, there is a particular ‘view’ of how the world is, and our view is limited to the world view of the stage of development that we are at. We simply do not see stuff that is beyond our world-view. There’s nothing stopping us extending ourselves beyond our current world view, but we have to work at it, and usually there has to be some ‘dissonance’ to make us uncomfortable, and move us on (no pain, no gain!). Fry, obviously, born before Integral Dynamics was discovered, hasn’t got the terminology, but puts it like this: “By some extraordinary ill luck I managed to miss seeing Cezanne’s work till some considerable time after his death (even Fry himself is trying to find an explanation for his blindness!)….But I gradually came to realize that what I had hoped for as a possible event of some future century had already occurred…. I expected to find myself entirely unreceptive to his art. To my intense surprise, I was deeply moved.” From that moment on, Fry became what we may call an apostle of Cezanne, and his writings reveal not only how moved but how stimulated he was, and remained, by the encounter with Cezanne’s work: Fry’s world-view had changed, and what a new panorama now unfolded before his eyes                                         

Back to the painting itself: I invite you to gaze at it for a moment or two………You could be forgiven for thinking that the objects in this painting have ascended, and float on the tablecloth, above the table. They somehow sit serenely still, balanced, but not by weight nor size; not imposing nor dominating, but neither reticent nor withdrawing – just there, where they should be; in their rightful place! (technical term in art is “mise en place”) And wow, they have a grace, a simplicity and a nobility which is so right and solid and powerful, as to challenge the very idea of dominator hierarchy itself.

“I want to conquer Paris with an apple” said Paul Cezanne.

“Cezanne communed with them. He understood them from the inside. He raised Still Life to such a point that it ceased to become inanimate… he was endowed with the gift of divining the inner life of everything.” Kandinsky

On the edge of becoming (FWN 390, 1862-4)

Portrait of Paul Cezanne                                FWN 390              1862/4                 44cm x 37cm

This self-portrait was copied from a photo taken in 1861, when Cezanne was 22: the photo is actually more gentle than the painting, which he painted a couple of years after the photo was taken! In that year, on Sunday 21st of April, Cezanne finally arrived in Paris. His father had suddenly relented, and offered Paul an allowance of 125 francs a month for an open-ended stay - which was enough to survive on - Zola was earning just 120 francs. Accompanied by his father, Cezanne had gone up to Paris for the first time to join Zola. And he did what Zola had recommended - visits to the Art Museums of Paris and work in art school filled his days. He writes that he felt just as lost in Paris as he had been in Aix (only the Parisian wine was not as good, nor was the weather, and the countryside, and on and on). It wasn’t that he was homesick; there was something missing: he didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know how to be an artist. Was his dream to go up to Paris, or be an artist? He lasted six months! He returned to work in his father’s bank as a cashier. Zola continued to try and persuade his friend to come back to Paris to be an artist; but to no avail - Cezanne was nothing if not stubborn. Cezanne even signed up for the local art school in Aix. But now the feeling of being lost persisted in his home town as well. A couple of years passed, and the choice was even more stark: bank clerk or artist! This time, Cezanne was ready: he has painted the determination into his self-portrait. This time he went to Paris on his own; this time he found his own flat; this time he organized his own routine. but crucially, this time, when he went to the art college, Academie Suisse, he met companions with whom he felt at home, who also wanted, like him, to become artists, of a new era: Armand Guillaumin, Antoine Guillemet, Fransisco Oller, and most importantly Camille Pissarro. This time there was no turning back, because he had discovered that his dream was neither in Aix, nor in Paris; it lay not in the way things had been done, but what had not yet come to be: and there lay the thrill of being on the edge of becoming! and what’s more, he had found companions with the same edge.

“Where is beauty — beauty isn’t all about just niceness, loveliness. Beauty is about more rounded substantial becoming. And when we cross a new threshold worthily, what we do is we heal the patterns of repetition that were in us that had us caught somewhere. So I think beauty in that sense is about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and also a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life.” John ODonogue

Montagne Sainte Victoire (FWN 54, 1870)

The Cutting, with Montagne Sainte Victoire          1870     FWN 54          80cm x 129

The railway cutting itself, in the centre of this painting, reminds me of Cezanne’s painting of a leg of lamb (FWN 705): it’s like the hillside is the Sunday roast joint, being sliced for the feast. I’m no vegetarian, but it somehow makes me shiver! The house to the left, on top of the hill recoils somewhat, and looks rather aghast as Mont Saint Victoire becomes no longer part of the same landscape. It’s pretty brutal, like the charged atmosphere of unrest on the eve of the devastating Franco-Prussian war; a country divided. As he’s done before, (cf The Summer of ’66, Bennecourt, FWN 42), Cezanne puts together the religious and industrial symbols of chimney and church spire (the venerable old church of Saint Sauveur in Aix is on the horizon above the cutting to the right of the chimney) with the symbol of industrial development much larger than that of the spiritual. The impact in this painting lies in the horizontals, beginning with the wall over which we behold this raw cutting; there is no gap in the wall, no invitation into the painting; rather, the horizontals act as an affront. The painting is the first to include Mont Saint Victoire, but in a supporting role. There are other landscapes that have a mountain in the background, and indeed Cezanne had a doodle at this same landscape in 1864 (FWN 48), but this is the first proper attempt.                                                                                                                              Cezanne is now moving into his Impressionist phase of painting (1870’s), when he lightens his palette and begins more consistently to paint outdoors. His focus in these decades was on coastal landscapes – around the Bay of Marseilles. He painted just two paintings of Mont Saint Victoire in the 1870’s, ten in the 1880’s, 8 in the 1890’s and 16 after the turn of the century (1900 to his death in 1906). For the last five years of his life, Cezanne’s contemplation of Mont Sainte Victoire took on monumental proportions.

“If you trust in Nature, in what is simple in Nature, in the small things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.”

"Not since Moses has anyone seen a mountain so greatly" Rainer Maria Rilke

Liberty, equality and fraternity (FWN 610, 1870)

Le Dejeuner sur L’Herbe      FWN 610         1870                     60cm x 81

Manet’s Dejeuner sur L’Herbe

It was in 1865 that Cezanne first met Manet in the fashionable Café Guerbois, where Manet gathered all the radical young artists: one of the crew, a certain unknown guy by the name of Monet tells the tale “Cezanne pushed his jacket aside with a movement of his hips worthy of a zink-worker, pulled up his pants, and openly re-adjusted his red belt to one side. After that, he shook everyone’s hand. But when he came to Manet, he removed his hat and smiling, said through his nose: ‘I won’t give you my hand, monsieur Manet, I haven’t washed for eight days’”. From then on, they kept their distance. Two years earlier in 1863, with pressure mounting each year from Manet and his crew (Sisley, Monet, Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Bazille, and writers like Zola), the self-declared Emperor agreed to allow an exhibition of the paintings that had been refused by the Salon - “Salon des Refuses”. Manet’s Dejeuner sur L’Herbe -with naked women, and well-to-do men, casually having a picnic in the park - caused a scandal!                                                                                                                                                    A few years later, Cezanne produced his own version of the picnic in the park, putting himself as the central figure, though with his back to us, and his sisters each side; Cezanne replaces the bathing woman, with a guy smoking a pipe, and the trees with a couple moving away. The interpretation of Cezanne’ painting has been a matter of some speculation, as you might expect, with one commentator suggesting it is a presentation of sensuous desire versus rational moderation -whatever!                                                                                                                                                             The French Revolution (1793) abolished the condition of owning property as a right to register and vote, but it was not enacted in law until 1848, when universal suffrage became law – well, not quite ‘universal’: rather unbelievably, women did not get to vote in France till 1944! Julie-Victoire Daubie would campaign as a journalist all her life for women’s rights, writing her first essay as a journalist in 1859 on: ‘The poor woman in the nineteenth century – female conditions and resources’.                                                                      Berthe Morisot (1841–1895), Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), Eva Gonzalès (1849–1883), and Marie Bracquemond (1840–1916) were all members of the Impressionist circle. These four women—three French artists and one American artist living in Paris—exhibited works that were as innovative as those of their male counterparts. While they have diverse biographies, each of these artists overcame daunting obstacles to contribute to the development of Impressionism. As they shaped their unique careers and artistic styles, Morisot, Cassatt, Gonzalès, and Bracquemond negotiated not only personal challenges but also those posed by the conventional ideas of acceptable behaviour for women of their time. Amongst the crew at the Café Guerbois at the time of which we speak, was Berthe Morisot – the only Impressionist painter, along with Pissarro, who had works exhibited in all the Impressionist Exhibitions of the next decade. Just as Pissarro would effectively be Cezanne’s mentor, so did Morisot support Manet to develop his technique.  Much to the chagrin of the guys, I’m sure, she had paintings accepted by the Salon from 1864 onwards!  She would eventually marry Manet’s brother, and she was, as Cezanne was, a close friend of Renoir.                                             

“While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.” ― Robert Burns, 1792