painting like an impressionist (FWN 297, 1892-5)

Mount Sainte Victoire viewed from Gardanne      FWN 297      1892-95       73 cm x 92                Yokohama

Cezanne was so happy to be back: it was here he had fled, some five years ago, with Hortense and young Paul, from his blood relatives, and from life, into the little village of Gardanne. It was here where he had come to terms with the mental strain of life as an artist, one who was trying so hard to find his own path, and not be knocked this way or that: he thought he could withstand the criticism of the general public, and the art critics of the day, but it was the criticism of his closest friend, Zola, that had been the last straw. It wasn’t so much a criticism of Cezanne’s work either; even worse, it was, rather, the end of an intentional relationship. They had vowed to change the world, together; and that was now gone. Zola had lost faith in him. That sadness would remain deep in his soul. It was here, in Gardanne, that Cezanne had managed to reconcile himself to that deep sadness, and so escape that depth of depression when you, and all around you, seem to swirl into a downward spiral of emptiness. Cezanne gave thanks that it was here that his healing happened.

In this painting across the interlocking landscape looking away from Gardanne, across to La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, Cezanne would choose the soft and warm colours of the Impressionist movement. When he painted this particular painting, the impressionist movement was twenty years ago! Memories of those days flashed through his mind – how the local people of Aix, having declared a Republic following the lead of the Communards in Paris, nominated him as Director of Arts. Who’d have thought it! But that was before the bloody and brutal re-possession of Paris by the ‘Emperor’, in league with the Prussian conquerors. Zola had stayed in Paris – reporting on the atrocities he witnessed; typical Zola! While everyone else was lying low.

And then, a couple of years after the bloodshed, amongst the ruins of Paris, Cezanne had met the peaceful anarchist Pissarro. What a transformation they had achieved, together. He had walked and talked with Pissarro around Auvers and Pontoise, and they had painted together, outdoors, in the open air, with an airy, light, warm and colourful palette. That’s how he would paint today, twenty years on. It was proof indeed that he had come to terms with the turmoil of his life thus far. He felt a certain serenity and strength.

And what’s more, this was the mood through-out the whole of France. The brief rise of nationalist patriotism of the late 1880’s – calling for France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian war to be avenged, and the return to an Imperial France – had passed. The people of France chose firmly in favour of the Republic: the Republicans were victorious in the 1893 General Elections gaining an increased majority. Provence was rediscovering its own traditions, and what it meant to be a Republic; happy to elect reformist leaders; Prime Minister Léon Gambetta was the son of a Marseille grocer, and future prime minister Georges Clemenceau was elected deputy of neighbouring Var in 1885. The paths of Cezanne and Clemenceau would soon cross, through the auspices of the person who had been the organizer of the Impressionists, Claude Monet – ‘he’s just an eye’ thought Cezanne ‘but what an eye!’.

France had finally embedded the transition instigated by the first French Revolution of nigh on 100 years ago. With hindsight, and using the resources so abundantly left by the revolutionaries (the systematic and detailed records of wealth, inheritance, tax returns and so on), we can now see that France had made a transition from a ‘ternary society’ to a ‘proprietarian’ society; from a society based on the three functional groups of clergy, nobility and the ‘third estate’ (the workers) - to a society based on the sacralization of property. The concentration of wealth in 1800 was such that the top 1 per cent owned 45% of private property of all kinds; but by 1914, the top 1 per cent owned 55% of all wealth. In Paris, that figure had reached 65% by 1914. So, not much change there for 100 years of being a Republic aiming for liberty, fraternity and equality! The change took place in the emergence of the ‘property owning middle class’. The wealth of this group of people – the 40%, between the poorest 50% and the richest 10% - would grow from just 15% in 1800 to some 40% wealth ownership, while the top 10% share would fall equivalently (back to around 55% - not falling so far as to make us commiserate for too long!). (Piketty Capital and Ideology). The poorest 50% have remained where they’ve always been: poor!

The make-up of the wealth of the rich had also changed since the first Revolution, within the lifetime of the young Republic: ‘the preponderance of stocks, bonds, bank deposits and other monetary assets over real estate reflects a profound reality: the ownership elite of the Belle Epoque (1885 – to 1914) was primarily a financial, capitalist, and industrial elite.’ (Piketty Capital and Ideology p.136) – ‘the upward trend in the concentration of wealth in France over the long nineteenth century was a phenomenon of ‘modernity’.

Indeed, this was one of the aspects that Cezanne loathed in his father: the self-righteousness of the self-made man, who had acquired his fortune financing others in hard times – the banker of Aix. They had ‘reconciled’ shortly before his death in 1886, and Louis Auguste’s fortune enabled Cezanne to provide for Hortense and the teenager Paul. But more importantly, it allowed Cezanne to get on with what he had to do: paint!

Cezanne was a voracious reader, and would have known of the attempt to introduce progressive taxation to counter the rising inequality within the young Republic (if only because of the possibility of his father’s inheritance being taxed!), but it received little consideration; an attempt to increase inheritance tax to a rather modest 1.5% had been flatly rejected by the National Assembly, invoking the natural right of direct descendants: “When a son succeeds his father, it is not strictly speaking a transmission of property that takes place; it is merely continued enjoyment of the property” (Piketty 141).

Anyway, it wasn’t Cezanne’s calling to address the inequalities arising within the young Republic; but it was worrying precisely because it seemed to be part and parcel of this new age; and though they had now all gone their separate ways – Cezanne and Zola, and the Impressionists, they all still longed for a new age that was not dominated by the Imperial, patriarchal and hierarchical traditions of the past, but that was colourful and natural, bright and open, free and equal.

Cezanne’s calling was to paint – and here in this place he was able to cherish what had been, and indeed celebrate it with an Impressionist painting!

For the future, he was confident that he could follow his creative spirit, wherever that would take him, for in some sense he now felt it was the creative spirit of a new age; but if it wasn’t, then hey, it’s just what he had to do!

In the randomness

of the way

the rocks

tumbled

my life

flows;

one of those gorgeous things

that was made to do

what it does

perfectly

After Mary Oliver

The turning (FWN 284, 1892-4)

Reflections in water               FWN 284             1892 – 4              65 cm x 92          Ehime, Japan

This series of blogs concentrates on Cezanne’s ‘mature phase’: the phase is a wonderful paradox of an intensity of focus and freedom of expression, of self-confidence and of self-yeasting, of mountain and quarry, of panorama and undergrowth, of huddled card-players and expansive bathers, of kitchen tables of fruit and bedroom tables of skulls, of watercolour and oil. At the deepest level of evolutionary consciousness, it is both re-wilding and emergent creativity.

“Right now, a moment of time is passing.

We must become that moment”

Cezanne

Seamus Heaney: An Artist

Exactly when his mature phase began is a matter of debate, but one thing is for sure: that there was a noticeable change, a turning, in Cezanne’s artistic expression around this time, and that this phase saw a blossoming of Cezanne’s oeuvre. This ‘turning’ has been described by various critics in different ways; and I will concentrate on it in this blog, as an introduction to this series.

In his book of 1927, ‘Cezanne A Study of His Development’, the great Cezanne devotee and critic, Roger Fry selects this landscape as one which expresses “the latest manner of our artist” (p.80); ‘It would appear’ Fry continues ‘that there was at the end of Cezanne’s life a recrudescence of the impetuous, romantic exuberance of his early youth. It is deeply affected and modified by the experience of the intervening years. There is nothing wanton or wilful about it, nothing of the defiant gesture of that period, but there is a new impetuosity in the rhythms, a new exaltation in the colour.’

Fry continues with a brief analysis of our painting: ‘The landscape of a pool overhung with foliage gives an idea of the disintegration of volumes…It is quite true that in nature such a scene gives an effect of a confused interweft, but in earlier days Cezanne either would not have accepted it as a motif or would have established certain definitely articulated masses. Here, the flux of small movements is continuous and unbroken. We seem almost back to the attitude of the pure Impressionists. But this is illusory, for there will be found to emerge from this a far more definite and coherent plastic (flexible) construction than theirs. It is no mere impression of a natural effect, but a re-creation which has a similar dazzling multiplicity and involution.’

Cezanne had moved up a gear; he was now in overdrive!

I would place Cezanne’s final phase of artistic development from 1888. It was in the year of 1888 that Cezanne painted the Chantilly Forest three times: the last of which marks the beginning of “the latest manner of our artist”. These three paintings mark Cezanne’s realization that he has been on a journey through stages of development; and more pertinently, that he himself can ‘manage’ this development simply, in the first instance, by acknowledging it. In that realization lies his rejuvenation and his freedom (his ‘recrudescence’, as Fry describes it).

In his poem above, Seamus Heaney describes it in the colours of Cezanne and in these words: Cezanne could now “do what he knew”. In a previous blog, I have explored the idea of ‘lines of development’ in relation to the three Chantilly paintings, and later in this series I will concentrate in particular on the spiritual line of development observable in Cezanne’s oeuvre.

For now, let me try to describe what I understand to be the basis of the ‘turning’ that Cezanne experienced in those late years of the 1880’s. Underlying Cezanne’s mature phase of painting was the implicit realization that at its deepest level, the creative spirit is emergent. Cezanne’s understanding has flipped: the creative spirit is not confined within the personal, simply existing within us, in our heads or our hearts; rather, we exist within the creative spirit. There is a profound sense in which the creative spirit is received as inspiration: that such inspiration comes from without, but connects deeply within. In the act of painting, Cezanne was indeed connecting with the creative spirit. It is in this sense that the creative spirit is ‘transpersonal’: the creative spirit is not less than the personal, but rather it includes and goes beyond that which is personal.

We will examine in later blogs more precisely what we mean, but suffice for now to say importantly what it does not mean. By this ‘creative spirit’ I do not mean to offer a name for ‘God’, or a ‘divine being’. I want to indicate that there is a ‘creativity’, a ‘creative spirit’, at work at all levels of existence – it is what I mean when I say that one of the elements we see within our universe is that of including and transcending; our universe seems to function in this way. The idea of the creative spirit indicates both that our world, which is continuously greater than the sum of the parts, is in the process of being created, and that it is thereby transpersonal.

Because the creative spirit is transpersonal, it does not belong to any one individual or being; it cannot be owned by any one individual. Individuals can connect to the creative spirit, with intention, practice and self-criticism. When we participate in creative activity, we feel it in the deepest whole of our being. This is what I mean when I use the word ‘spiritual’, and through-out this series of blogs I will examine Cezanne’s spiritual line of development in greater detail, and I hope, in greater clarity.

It is this stage of spiritual development that the thirteen century Persian poet Rumi describes thus:

I have lived on the lip of insanity,

wanting to know reasons,

knocking on a door.

It opens.

I’ve been knocking from the inside!

Rumi

The creative dynamic (FWN 826, 1890)

The Vase of Tulips        FWN 826       1890        59.6 cm x 42.3         Art Institute, Chicago

Cezanne gave this painting of tulips and fruit to his good friend and art companion, Victor Chocquet. Victor was amongst the few people with whom Cezanne remained a close friend for all their lives: more than that really – they shared a love of art, and they loved to share their understanding of art. They delighted in each other’s company. Victor had that gift of being able to listen deeply; both were passionate about the dynamic spirit of art that was developing around them. Victor was a tax officer; later in life his wife Marie inherited a farm in Normandy, and he was able to retire. He would spend his days in the Impressionist Exhibitions and galleries explaining to the visitors how to appreciate this new dynamism. He was a fervent advocate of Impressionism with a gentle and serene manner.

And it’s a gentle and serene painting: an abundance of flowers and beautifully balanced colours bursting out of the vase, on a simple wooden table, with decorative legs, and three pieces of fruit. Nothing more, nothing less: sufficient unto itself….nearly. Just one thing remains – not just our attention, but also our intention. In the dynamic of the different dimensions, we are invited to participate.

I love to gaze at the colours in the table: warm colours, opened up with the airiness of hints of blue; matched by the same combinations of colours in the lower half of the vase. If I concentrate my gaze on the deep green of the vase, it reminds me of those crystal balls within which you can see a scene of water and foliage. It’s lovely how the white petals reach out to the golden delicious apple at the back of the table and fuse together the vase, apple and petal: there is no edge. The diagonal of the tabletop is angled to stretch the surface area of the table, so much so that the horizontal top of the table furthest away appears to ‘bow’, (as in bow and arrow) but it is in fact straight. We look down onto the tabletop, while the vase is viewed straight on: solidly supporting its abundance.

Cezanne paints the vase from the angle of looking straight on, and he paints the tabletop from an angle up above, looking down onto the table. This sets up an interplay, a dynamism, between the tabletop, the vase and the viewer, as our eyes continuously adjust to the dynamic interplay. We are thus invited to participate not as viewer, looking at an object: not understood in terms of separate ‘objects’ but rather as an ‘event’. It is still quite hard for us to respond positively to the invitation to participate with a painting as an event rather than a viewer and a painting on the wall - to sit with it and realize a certain harmony in which we, and all the things around us, participate. It was, I suspect, even harder for Cezanne and Victor as they tried to comprehend what was happening.

We find ourselves so often still embedded in a culture based on a narrative of separation, which brings forth a world where we separate subject and object, mind and matter, self and world, them and us, humanity and nature, into mutually exclusive categories, instead of healing this Cartesian split and embracing a narrative of interbeing, where we see nature everywhere and understand the wholeness of nature as a living process in which we participate.

I reckon Cezanne painted this in the Spring of 1890. The Cezanne family went to the Jura for some months during the summer and autumn of that year as they visited Hortense’s family after the death of her father. Hortense wrote to Marie Chocquet suggesting that Victor and Marie join them in Switzerland next year.

By next year, a new generation of young writers, artists and critics began to emerge who were to recognize the dynamic spirit of this new artistic expression, and Cezanne’s contribution. The outspoken art critic and political activist, Felix Feneon wrote: ‘long neglected, the Cezanne tradition is being diligently cultivated’. And an article entitled ‘Paul Cezanne’ was published in the series ‘Les Hommes d’aujour’dui’ ‘The Men of Today’ by Emile Bernard, with a portrait of Cezanne by Pissarro on the cover. Victor and Cezanne were not to continue their conversations about this new dynamic spirit: Victor sadly passed away in April 1891; but I’m sure that Victor would have felt a certain fulfillment in knowing that his passion and understanding of the dynamic creative spirit was being taken up by a new generation.

And in our time, this passing on of the creative dynamic of the evolutionary spirit appears in many forms, in diverse disciplines and in unexpected ways. All we have to do, is hold the intention to participate.

Here’s an example I like, in words and re-cognition:

“The ‘systems view’ understands life as networks of relationships. We can find network patterns at the scale of individual cells, organs, organisms, communities, ecosystems or the biosphere as a whole. The qualitative emergent properties that make life worth living and sustain life as a whole are not located in one or many organisms, they are distributed across all the scales as systemic properties of a living and transforming whole in which every participant counts and we all co-create the future.”

D Wahl, Designing Regenerative Cultures, p. 84.

Lines of development (FWN 244, 1888)

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)

Madame Cezanne (FWN 488, 1886-7)

Portrait of Madame Cezanne       FWN 488        1888/90          47 cm x 59             MO

This portrait of Hortense Fiquet Cezanne is one of a set of three, one including her hands on her lap (FWN 487), and the other down to just above her hands (FWN 489). For me, this is the least worked, and the most developed: it’s realization, and complexity, is in its simplicity. The three distinct areas of colour – Hortense’ blue-green dress, the mustardy wall behind Hortense to the upper left, and the lighter blue wall behind Hortense to the upper right – are full of movement: the ruffling collars of the dress and the front fraught frilly seam – flowing in short vertical waves; the mustardy area above her left shoulder (where you can just make out some of the wall-paper), flows in by her hidden ear, and out again to the left of her parted hair - undulating like the sea; on the other side, the darker blue colouring of Hortense’ shadow, all the way down her head, neck and shoulder, has the effect of giving depth to the lighter blue, like cumulous clouds in a squally sky..

In the midst of all this movement, there is a presence, simple and serene, structured and still, silent and focused – presence in her own space, not confined nor over-extended, just there, in the moment.

I hadn’t realized before I started to do some research for this blog that the Cezanne family had gone to Switzerland – well, towards Switzerland – twice, at least: you immediately think of Cezanne’s Le Lac D’Annecy – but that visit was in 1896. They spent an extended period (some four months) near Besancon, in Emagny, in 1890. Hortense was born just 25k away in Saligney. Her father had brought the family to Paris after their mother had died when Hortense was a teenager, but it had not worked out. He took the family back to Saligney, but Hortense stayed in Paris, working as a seamstress during the day and as an art model in the evenings. That’s how she had met Cezanne. There was a popular song around, about a model and mistress of a ‘rapin’ (the name given to the cashless painters of Montmartre), which contained this quatrain -

"Painting is beautiful but it's sad
because it lacks a bit of essential.
Don't rely on an artist
to furnish yourself at Dufayel.”

The Grands Magasins Dufayel was a huge department store with inexpensive prices built in 1890 in Goutte d’Or, a very poor working-class district in the northern part of Paris, just east of Montmartre, run by Georges Dufayel. It was not so much one department store, as a ‘shopping retail park’: all kinds of shops gathered in one complex around a central square. As well as food and grocery outlets, clothes and furniture shops, there was a theatre, a cinema, a gramophone and X-ray display centre, cafes and bars – it was designed to be the social centre of this new, urban, space. It was adorned lavishly with statues and fountains, seating areas and promenades.

I think that it was perhaps this development that, a generation later, inspired the Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre to write his book about “the critique of everyday life”. He would propose that each era of human existence produced its own ‘social space’, reflecting the values of that society. So, just as the Greeks had the ‘ekklesia’ or gathering around the Acropolis, so too modern urban society now had the central square of the great shopping retail parks: the space for social interaction, where the values underpinning the mode of production were celebrated and re-enforced.

Hortense’ father passed away in 1889; and I’m sure that she spent those months in Emagny mourning his passing with the rest of the family, and generally sorting out family affairs. Hortense sent a fairly long and fluent letter on 1st Aug 1890 to Marie Chocquet, who was married to Victor and lived in Normandy. Hortense concludes: “We hope that next year, we will have the pleasure of seeing you both in Switzerland”.

The new Dufayel Store provided lots of opportunities for young women to work in better jobs than traditional women’s work like Hortense had done when younger; the social interaction, the novelty and the size of the Dufayel was a real positive; but the pay was low, and the hours were long. It was this tension that Lefebvre pointed to in his understanding of everyday life, which he defined as the intersection of "illusion and truth, power and helplessness; the intersection of the sector that man controls and the sector he does not control".

Dufayel had the bright idea of introducing a scheme to extend credit to the urban working class: you could access credit by paying 20% of the cost of the item and agreeing to repay the rest (with interest included, of course) in regular instalments. Dufayel had a squad of 800 ‘investigators’ whose task it was to nip along to the home of the prospective borrower while the deal was being arranged and interview the landlord about the ‘credit-worthiness’ of the family. Once agreed, it was the task of the ‘investigators’ to collect the payments on the due dates. As part of their task, the investigators collated lots of information about their clients, and eventually were able to produce ‘databases’ which Dufayel would use for advertising and product development.

The scene was set to encourage the working poor, and furnish them with the means, to engage together in the ‘urban space’ in which they were squeezed. It would be a few generations yet before ideas would crystalize about who exactly held the right to the space in which the working poor were squeezed– was it part of a common right or in private ownership?

“The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.”

David Harvey      Economic Geographer, aged 85.

Postscript

Before any letters written by Hortense were discovered, the art critics of the day assumed she was illiterate. And then, well, like it says in the song, she made her living by being a model and a mistress…where-as, we discover, she was a seamstress, and seems to have gone back to her birthplace to manage the family affairs, and family property. Later, some of the Impressionist circle called her ‘Le boule’, and her son ‘le petit boule’; and so, later critics inferred that she was rather plump, a dumpling, and a bit ‘slow’. But in fact, as we see from this painting when she was forty, she was tall and slim. And, even later still, after Cezanne had passed away and his paintings were sought after, and could demand a high price, she was accused of not appreciating them because she sold most of them: but it must be quite difficult to hang 1000 oil-paintings in your front room!

Indeed, this painting, her own portrait, was bought by Matisse (via Paul Cezanne junior) and he proudly displayed it in his rather large and full, front room in Nice!

The reunion of the Cezanne and Chocquet families in Switzerland did not happen: Victor had by the next year, sadly passed away. But I’m sure that Marie and Hortense continued to be good friends and met up many times in the new urban spaces springing up in Paris.

Henri Matisse in Nice 1932

Portrait of Madame Matisse        1905      Henri Matisse

At home in many dimensions (FWN 238, 1887)

House and farm at the Jas de Bouffan        FWN 238          1887      60 cm x 73          Prague

“Plasticity refers to the degree of dimensionality in an object, and the active interplay between positive volume and surrounding space. The term comes from the Greek word plassein, meaning “to mould.” (V. Palermo)

In his 1895 essay “Is Life Worth Living?” the American philosopher William James wrote, “Truly, all we know of good and duty, proceeds from nature… [which] is all plasticity and indifference – a moral multiverse, as one might call it, and not a universe”.

Back in 1895, it was extremely challenging to suggest the possibility of different Truths: so challenging it made people ask whether life was worth living if things were so chaotic! I think to myself it all started with the idea that the earth goes round the sun! A crazy idea – to suggest that we humans (men..?) are not the centre of attention and meaning in this universe! That we humans may not be the highest intelligence that there is, with a soul that can reach to the infinite. That all we see, and touch, and hear and smell, and taste, may not give us clues to discover the absolute truth of the universe, through the rationality of our mind. Crazy to suggest that Truth may not be absolute and unchanging, and that we do not see it as it is.

Crazy, and frightening, to suggest that the ‘universe’ is ‘in fact’ (whatever that means) a multiverse!

The Cezanne patriarch, Louis Auguste, Cezanne’s dad, bought the Jas de Bouffan in 1859, – or, rather, he accepted the dilapidated ruins as settlement of a debt to his fledgling bank - when Cezanne was twenty years old. Some thirty years on, and Cezanne had never painted a full-frontal painting with the house itself as the central motif (he painted one in 1875 where the upper half of the house sticks out of the trees and bushes of the garden) : yes, Cezanne had painted the alley of chestnut trees, and the pond, and the view across the fields, and yes, maybe with the farm buildings in the background – but never the house itself: till 1887, when he painted it twice (cf below, House with Red Roof) (probably, I think, he painted the two canvasses, though from different settings, at the same time). Cezanne paints the house of the ‘House and Farm’, with all the shutters and windows wide open, to blow away the cobwebs of the past, to allow the mistral to clear the space and tilt the volume, and to signal the end of an era: a fitting memory of his father who passed away in late 1886, and the symbol of a new era of plasticity, that stretches our notion of truth into multi-dimensional beauty.

Yea, life is worth living! This painting makes me smile: it’s initially the colours – brown ochre, reds, blues, greens; the fantastic assortment of colours in the garden wall! But when I settle myself into my smile, it becomes apparent that my smile has two sources: it’s as if the smile comes out towards me from within the main house; but then there’s a smile from within me directed towards the farm buildings. There’s some kind of ‘spacious openness’ coming from the main house, and a ‘tight complexity’ from the farm buildings. (the tight complexity of the farm building is created in the juxtaposed verticality of buildings, encircled by the garden wall and the hill behind).  House, and Farm Buildings, create a kind of ‘push and pull’ effect, in the dimension of the depth perspective.

The dimension of the breadth of the vista is equally fascinating, dynamic and delightful. At first, you think that the foundation wall of the main building and the garden wall, form a continuous plane, extending right across the painting, left to right. But, then, the foundation wall at the very left, narrows, as it meets the bush; and the path bends round towards the side of the house. Now, our eye is directed right round the side of the house, up and over the roof; and so we’ve moved from the breadth, to the depth, in two little turns of the brush strokes. This is balanced on the far right of the garden wall: the wall grows wider, with parallel lines behind it, which give it depth – so again, we have been moved from breath to depth. Finally in this movement from breadth to depth, we see the ‘S’ shape that the foundation wall and the garden wall create across the painting, only broken by the funny little construction in the garden, which is both part of the garden and, though not within the farm buildings, is part of the farm buildings in its effect. The wall effect is softened by the bands of foliage green and earth brown.

Two American professors, Erle Loran and Pavel Machotka, published books which, by using photographs of the motif from different angles, included in-depth analysis of the ‘House and Farm’ painting; both wanted to show that Cezanne painted this motif as he actually saw it! I think both analyses rather miss the point: we don’t have to reduce Cezanne’s painting to the likeness of a photograph. It’s the old-school instinct of the scientific mind that attempts to get us to reduce things to the ‘basic facts’ in the belief that what is true resides there, and only there – in the flatlands of reductionism. (cf footnote for further info if you’re interested!)

The ‘House with the red roof’ (below) is so colourful, and delightfully designed with diagonal dashes of paint; if you can open the painting in full screen, you can delight in the interplay of colours bright and complementary, warm and dazzling. It’s a beautiful rendition of Cezanne’s Impressionist and Constructivist phase wrapped into one wonderful painting. The ‘House with the red roof’ below includes where Cezanne’s art has come from. The ‘House and Farm’ above goes beyond where he’s come from and indicates where he wants to go.

House with red roof      FWN 241     1887 (-9)        73 cm x 92          Private, Germany

Braque and Picasso were able to behold where Cezanne wanted to go, in his search to transcend the boundaries of traditional art and open a multiverse of meaning and form through the application of colour on canvass. Here’s Braque’s ‘Glass on a table’, which is so reminiscent for me of the farm buildings in Cezanne’s ‘House and Farm’.

                                                                           Braque                  Glass on a table 1909

A Poem of Many Dimensions

Pity the poor Flatlanders,
Squashed flat within the plane,
No height to see, just width and depth;
Their life oh so mundane.

Their shape is that of squares,
And Triangles, and others.
But, woe, a simple line
Forms their sisters and their mothers.

Yea, Flatland is a poor locale,
To that there's no dissentions.
And sad is he who spends his days
In the land of two dimensions.

But, knowing not their strife,
They enjoy it in their way,
And as they speak to one another,
They have been heard to say:

Pity the poor Linelanders,
Their world so long and thin.
And the only place they're going
Is the place where they have been.

The men are simple lines,
The women merely dots.
And all their lives they spend their time
In designated spots.

A speck is all that greets their eyes
When looking either way.
A more varied type of landscape
Is impossible, they say.

But, knowing not their strife,
They enjoy it in their way,
And as they speak to one another,
They have been heard to say:

Pity the poor Spacelander,
So proud of three dimensions.
He thinks that he is better than I;
A fool with his pretentions.

Pity the poor Pointlander,
In his world of no size.
No place to go, he sits alone
Thinking himself so wise.

For him, to move's impossible,
And nothing's there to see.
He is all, and all is him,
For all eternity.

David Stanke

(re-arranged)

Footnote:

Erle Loran, American painter and Art Historian (1905 – 1999), in his book on Cezanne’s Composition, includes an analysis of the forms and composition of this painting. He provides photos of the Jas de Bouffan from the position from which Cezanne set up his easel, and compares the photos to the painting, in order to analyse the changes that Cezanne made. There appear to be three big changes: in the photo, the main house actually appears to tilt slightly the other way! In the photo, the garden wall extends diagonally towards the artist, to the bottom right hand corner – Cezanne has pushed the garden wall back so that it appears horizontal across the painting. And thirdly, in the photo, the farm buildings appear as just one side of a building. Pavel Machotka, American Academic and Painter (1936 to 2019) in his book on Cezanne: Landscape into Art, does a similar analysis, and references Loran. Pavel reckons that where Erle went wrong was that the photo was taken standing up, where-as Cezanne was probably sitting down, in a bit of a dip too. Both professors want to prove that in fact, Cezanne painted the House and Farm buildings as he saw them. I think both analyses rather miss the point: we don’t have to reduce Cezanne’s painting to the likeness of a photograph. It’s the old attraction of the scientific mind to reduce things to the ‘basic facts’ in the belief that what is true resides there, and only there – in the flatlands of reductionism.

Towers of Babel (FWN 270, 1889-90)

Pigeon Tower at Bellevue     FWN 270       1889          60cm x 84          Cleveland USA

The battle had been raging for well over two years: how best to commemorate the centenary year of the French Revolution, 1889. As with many wars, it is the heat of the battle that crystalizes the central issue – The Eiffel Tower!

The Traditional camp: it was fear of its permanence, the prospect of the Eiffel's iron monstrosity dwarfing all the great Parisian monuments for years to come. A Committee of Three Hundred was formed – one member for each metre of the tower – consisting of some of the most illustrious names in French art and letters: artists Ernest Meissonier, Jean-Leon Gérôme, Adolphe Bouguereau, Antonin Mercié; writers Guy de Maupassant, Romain Rolland; musicians Jules Massenet, Charles Gounod; and, most telling of all, Charles Garnier, architect of the Opera House. The list of signatories to the protest was practically a roll call of all the outstanding proponents of tradition in literature, art, music and architecture: “Honoured compatriot, we come, writers, painters, sculptors, architects, passionate lovers of the beauty of Paris -- a beauty until now unspoiled -- to protest with all our might, with all our outrage, in the name of slighted French taste, in the name of threatened French art and history, against the erection, in the heart of our capital, of the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower. Is Paris now to be associated with the grotesque and mercantile imagination of a machine builder, to be defaced and disgraced? Even the commercial Americans would not want this Eiffel Tower which is, without any doubt, a dishonour to Paris.” (Arthur Chandler: revolution).

Stone is so symbolic: of a society that is stable and permanent; that is well-ordered, built on strong foundations, carved with dedication and love of duty by craftsmen, who hand their craft down from generation to generation, where everything and everybody has its proper place. Within that space, it is a place of warm belonging and safe space. It was not so much the fear of the permanence of the Tower, but its underlying insinuation – that an old order, a traditional value-system may be passing into history.

The Modern camp: Monsieur Eiffel, the chief engineer, was used to criticism, but never so vehement, and never from such a league of illustrious names. He replied in measured tones that engineers, too, have their standards of beauty no less worthy than those of the fine arts. His tactics were not to engage in a war of words, but to get the job done! The French Government would not have to finance the Tower. He made an agreement with the Government that he would finance the Tower provided he could reap the rewards, or bear the losses, of its use for fifty years. To this end he set up a limited company, so that in the event of losses, he would not be personally liable. He invited all the democratically elected local Town Hall Mayors through-out the whole of France to a Grand Opening Dinner. The final coup d’etat was to invite all the countries of the world which were Republics – Great Britain did not attend, the United States of America most certainly did! Monsieur Eiffel was an entrepreneur; and became a very rich man.

Iron and steel are so symbolic of a society that is efficient and pragmatic, not hung up on elaborate ideals of truth and beauty, nor merely concerned with the finer things of life; but inviting as many people to participate in the festivities as possible. The Tower must be the highest building in the world, not dominating all around, but merely showing that it can be done! Cathedrals and Grand Palaces have taken decades to construct; the Eiffel Tower, a mere two years.

There was also something of a ‘special relationship’ developed between the French and the Americans, sealed by a few initiatives at the Eiffel Tower. Edison's inventions provided every evening with a dazzling illumination of the tower. A series of powerful incandescent lights played over the surface of the tower and through the waters of the fountains at the tower's base. At the foot of the Eiffel Tower was another exhibit made possible by American inventiveness: the Telephone Pavilion. This structure served as the telephone communications center of the ‘exposition universale’, and the exhibits proudly showed the progressive extension of telephone lines from Paris to the outlying provinces. (Arthur Chandler: revolution).

But the ‘piece de resistance’ was: The Otis lift. The engineer of the American firm of Otis subjected the Otis lift to a final test before handing it over for public use. The lift was fastened with ordinary ropes, and this done it was detached from the cables of steel wire with which it is worked. What was to be done was to allow the lift to fall, so as to ascertain whether, if the steel cables were to give way, the brakes would work properly and support the lift. Two carpenters, craftsmen of the old order, armed with great hatchets ascended to the lift; at a given signal, a blow cut the rope and the enormous machine began to fall. Everyone was startled, but in its downward course the lift began to move more slowly, it swayed for a moment from left to right, stuck on the brake, and stopped. There was a general cheering. Not a pane of glass in the lift had been broken or cracked, and the car stopped without shock at a height of ten meters above the ground. (Arthur Chandler: revolution).

Meanwhile

The Impressionists were quiet

Renoir had gone down to Provence, renting Cezanne’s sister’s house at Montbriand. The World Fair in Paris was another world away. They were not moved to engage in that battle; instead, they set their spirit in the open air, walking to Bellevue, and Mont Saint Victoire, and set up their easels side by side: gazing on a different kind of Tower, for pigeons. Here, in Cezanne’s painting, we notice the complementary colours, the different view-points taken that elongate the upper slope of the roof in comparison to the lower slope; the diagonals of the blue brushstrokes of the sky pointing in the opposite direction to the upper part of the tower; the dynamic tensions of the axial tipping of the tower itself, within the geometric crisscross of horizontal and vertical planes; the coolness of the emerald green, the warmth of the orangey-red, the contrast of the Naples yellow of the tower, and the blue of the sky…

It is not stone nor steel that is the symbol of this new value-system, but a tapestry of complimentary colours, each contributing to the harmony of the whole, integrating diverse viewpoints and dynamic tensions; yet, held together within a deep sense of belonging, and sufficient efficiency: a new poise – a recognition of the wonder of the ordinary. This new, post-modern value system would focus on the abundant diversity of human cultures.

And, in our days, this value-system would include not just

the beauty of diversity, but the pain as well

- in an attempt to hold the human suffering

that has been unseen in previous value-systems:

suffering, in the collective,

with a new dedication to those people and groups

who have been previously marginalized or discounted by society,

and suffering, in the individual,

with a heightened awareness of psychic pain, trauma, and mental health.

Jeff Salzman (adapted)

To acknowledge and hold human suffering in each and every manifestation: this is the Great Work of the Post-Modern Value-System, in which we now live…

Renoir   1889

1976 photo John Rewald

The gender of colour (FWN 807, 1887-8)

Still life in front of a dresser     FWN 807        1887/8          71.5 cm x 90               Munich

“I met Tschudi, the Director of the Munich Gallery, and now I know why Burroughs spoke to you of Cezanne’s ‘nature morte’ (still-life). It is Tschudi who infects them all. I told him what I thought of Cezanne – I was one of his first admirers, but I certainly don’t put him where they do!” Mary Cassatt (1910). Mary Cassatt, who befriended and mentored Degas (sadly, he needed some befriending) was one of the “three great women” of Impressionism (along with Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot). Hugo von Tschudi was responsible for acquiring the first Cezanne painting to be displayed in a public gallery – in July 1897. (The Mill at Pontoise, FWN 158). Tschudi acquired six Cezanne’s altogether – three are in Berlin, and three in Munich, including this one. (when Tschudi acquired the ‘Birth of Christ’ by Gauguin, it was the final straw for the Kaiser, and he sacked poor old Hugo!)

When put next to each other, complementary colours, on opposite sides of the colour wheel, provide high contrast and high impact combinations: side by side, they each will appear more bright and more prominent. So, by putting the orangey red of the fruit and the blue white of the tablecloth next to each other, Cezanne augments the colours he uses. They jump out at us - not only because they seem to come beyond the edge of the split-level table towards us and also seem to float above the table, held in the air by a tablecloth! – but because of the colours themselves!

In 1854, a chemist working in a weaving factory, sought to find an answer for his weavers who complained that when they put complementary coloured weave next to each other in the tapestry, the colours became extra bright; and, more annoyingly, when they put juxtaposed weave together, the colours seem to modify the hue. So it was that Chevreul eventually published his book: The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours; and so was born “The Law of simultaneous contrast”. Thus we have scientific laws for the experience that complementary colours appear more prominent; that, with two colours next to each other on the wheel, when put together in reality, the darker one darkens and the lighter one lightens; and that, with juxtaposed colours, the complementary colour of the lighter one is seen to tint the darker one. (When Chevreul’s weavers juxtaposed black thread with blue, the black thread would appear tinted with orange – the complementary of blue- or, if put next to violet, the black would take on a hint of yellow) (Post-Impressionist Masterworks, Samuel Raybone). Chevreul was rewarded for his work by having his name engraved on the Eiffel Tower (constructed between 1887 to 1889 for the World Fair in Paris of 1889): joining the seventy-one other men of science, engineering, and mathematics recognized for their contributions to our modern Industrial Growth Society.

Chevreul’s Laws of Colour caused all sorts of bother: he had proved, scientifically, that the human brain alters what we see. Impressionist painters wanted to paint the experience of the impression of the motif: the ‘savage eye’ that would enable them simply to copy what their eyes ‘saw’ – the impression of the object on the eye before it is interpreted by the mind. But Chevreul’s laws seemed to prove this was not possible. What does it mean to be faithful to nature in painting? Should the painter make allowances for the way the brain manipulates what we see? Later, the post-Impressionist painter Paul Signac sought to apply these new laws of colour, and vision, by painting with dots, so that the brain could interpret the dots as the scientifically astute artist anticipates.

The application of the scientific laws of colour was still circumscribed within a hierarchy of gendered theory about artistic technique: The ‘male’ principle of controlled activity was contrasted with the ‘female’ elements of artistic technique that resist systematic ordering. ‘Colour is the most feminine of the pictorial elements, because it is traditionally the most unmanageable – colour is inherently emotional’. (Cezanne by Richard Shiff, on Charles Blanc, French Art Critic). Whether you put your faith in the laws of science, or in the intuition of the artist, no-one questioned the gendered hierarchical understanding of artistic technique, and critique. On seeing Cassatt’s ‘Two Women Picking Fruit’ for the first time, Degas splurted out his instinctive response: “No woman has the right to draw like that!”.

“If I have not been absolutely feminine, then I have failed,” wrote Mary Cassatt, while at work on a mural for the Columbian World Fair of 1892. Among the most prominent painters and printmakers of her generation, Cassatt (1844–1926) had been asked to develop a decorative program on the subject of “modern woman” for an Exposition, an international fair held in Chicago in 1893. Once installed, her vast mural astonished viewers with its allegorical depiction of larger-than-life girls and women jointly pursuing scientific, artistic, and cultural achievements. When asked why she had excluded male figures from her vision of contemporary womanhood, Cassatt replied, “Men, I have no doubt, are painted in all their vigour on the walls of the other buildings.”

While the men were busy constructing monuments of the scientific and industrial growth society, the women were busy de-constructing the whole accompanying value-system.

our work should equip

the next generation of women

to outdo us in every field

this is the legacy we’ll leave behind

Rupi Kaur

Rambling without a destination (FWN 947, 1890)

Bathers                FWN 947             1890                     60 cm x 81                         Museum D’Orsay, Paris

“The task of genius ought to be to show the peaceful harmony of all things, striding forth into the open, all in step, their desires the same”                        Paul Cezanne

This quote of Cezanne reminds me of the first chapter of one of the earliest books on the Tao, entitled “Rambling without a destination”. It’s meaning: if you travel your journey with an open heart, then whatever you meet, can contribute to your journey creatively, as you go along. If you are in touch with your deepest self, and in harmony with your surroundings, then you will know which way to go: your destination will, at each point, emerge.

“Socialist Utopias”, writes Hajo Duchting, from Dusseldorf, (in his beautifully illustrated book on Cezanne: the very first one I ever bought!) “opened up new realms of expectation through the hopes of societal change which they held out.” No group of workers more than coal miners made better use of the 1884 Act legalizing the right to gather in ‘Associations’: more than 50% unionization was achieved very quickly, and higher in specific heavy mining areas like the Loire. The miners soon realized that the defense of their gains involved activity on a wider, national level. Their concerns were not just about wages, hours and conditions but supporting cooperative stores, developing lay schools, having civil affordable funerals, and electing radical municipalities. Yet, 60% of French workers still worked in units of under ten people; despite the Industrial Revolution, in France, engineering, building and furniture-making still required skilled men – only half of the furniture-makers in Paris worked in mechanized factories in the 1890’s (it was before IKEA!). But, unionized or not, everyone could sense the energy of change around them, directly affected or not, supportive or not – everybody felt it!

Cezanne’s mother – Elizabeth Aubert – was born in 1814 and was in her mid-seventies at this time. Her husband, Cezanne’s autocratic father, had passed away, and she lived in the family home with her two daughters, while Cezanne worked downstairs in his own room where he had all his paint stuff. He and his mother were kindred souls: he was her favourite child. As she grew more elderly, he it was who would arrange a carriage, and take her out for the day. One of their best summer day’s out was down by the river Arc, just a couple of kilometers directly south. It was a popular place, and there was lots to occupy her afternoon out, while Cezanne set up his easel. On this particular day, a bunch of young soldiers had come for an afternoon’s swim. It reminded Cezanne of the lazy hazy days in his youth, when he, Zola, Baille and the crew would ramble without a destination, wandering along the Arc riverbank, swimming, fishing, cooking, lying under a great pine…dreaming of changing the world!

Zola had indeed become a famous writer – a chronicler of this new era of change. His series of novels about the fortunes of a family facing both the opportunity and the threat of this new industrial age had been extremely successful far and wide, and in no small measure because he told it like it is: creative, challenging and energizing, but brutal, violent and degrading. By presenting stories of the real life of ordinary people, Zola developed his ‘naturalist’ philosophy: an attempt to examine the interplay of the squalid aspects of the human environment and the seamy side of human nature with the unshakable belief in the moral progress of humanity.

So, it was not just Marx and comrades who hoped for something new and had a new philosophy to go with it! There were lots around at the time: Zola’s naturalism, Marx’s Manifesto, Durkheim’s sociology of upheaval and normlessness, Freud’s unconscious urges, and Darwin’s Survival of the fittest, - not to mention the Pope’s Doctrine of Infallibility! The question, though, seemed pretty much the same from whatever angle: was humanity making progress or going backwards? The answer provided, from whatever angle, seemed to hinge on a choice between a deterministic view of history or one affirming individual freedom!

Duchting concludes his piece: “They” (the bathers) “are timeless archetypes of non-historical harmony with all-powerful Nature”; (I wonder what he makes of that statement now, made when he was in his forties, now that he’s in his seventies). Other commentators point out that the figure with the white towel draped over his arm is very similar to the antique marble statue in the Louvre “The Roman Orator”, which Cezanne copied ten times when younger! Yet others explore the number of bathers in all Cezanne’s bather-scenes in the hope of discovering a hidden meaning in the numbers, or in the stance of each bather, and so on. Even others find something about Cezanne’s sexuality in the fact that this appears to be one of his last paintings of male bathers. More interestingly is the overall shape within which Cezanne frames the figures of the painting: a ‘tympanum’ is a semi-circular indented decorative arch over a doorway. And yes, you could trace that shape, up and over the top of the front four guys.

For me, I like it – it’s carefree and busy, energetic and playful: a lazy Sunday afternoon – no time to worry, close your eyes and drift away. Maybe, Cezanne – just out for the day with his old mum, painted as many of the young soldiers into this composition as he could, and just let it emerge…

Rambling without a destination:

Cezanne:  

The peaceful harmony of all things,

striding forth into the open

The Tao:  

The intentional experience of

living in harmony with one’s own deepest inner feelings and

with one’s embodied existence

in human society and on our earth.

Let’s go a-rambling!

(Tao quote from Jeremy Dent’s The Patterning Instinct)

clean pain (FWN 479, 1885-6)

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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