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Paul Cézanne Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural figures of the modern period. Each book explores the life of the artist, writer, philosopher or architect in question and relates it to their major works. In the same series Antonin Artaud David A. Shafer Carl Jung Paul Bishop Roland Barthes Andy Stafford Franz Kafka Sander L. Gilman Georges Bataille Stuart Kendall Frida Kahlo Gannit Ankori Charles Baudelaire Rosemary Lloyd Yves Klein Nuit Banai Simone de Beauvoir Ursula Tidd Akira Kurosawa Peter Wild Samuel Beckett Andrew Gibson Lenin Lars T. Lih Walter Benjamin Esther Leslie Stéphane Mallarmé Roger Pearson John Berger Andy Merrifield Gabriel García Márquez Stephen M. Hart Jorge Luis Borges Jason Wilson Karl Marx Paul Thomas Constantin Brancusi Sanda Miller Henry Miller David Stephen Calonne Bertolt Brecht Philip Glahn Yukio Mishima Damian Flanagan Charles Bukowski David Stephen Calonne Eadweard Muybridge Marta Braun William S. Burroughs Phil Baker Vladimir Nabokov Barbara Wyllie John Cage Rob Haskins Pablo Neruda Dominic Moran Albert Camus Edward J. Hughes Georgia O’Keeffe Nancy J. Scott Fidel Castro Nick Caistor Octavio Paz Nick Caistor Paul Cézanne Jon Kear Pablo Picasso Mary Ann Caws Coco Chanel Linda Simon Edgar Allan Poe Kevin J. Hayes Noam Chomsky Wolfgang B. Sperlich Ezra Pound Alec Marsh Jean Cocteau James S. Williams Marcel Proust Adam Watt Salvador Dalí Mary Ann Caws John Ruskin Andrew Ballantyne Guy Debord Andy Merrifield Jean-Paul Sartre Andrew Leak Claude Debussy David J. Code Erik Satie Mary E. Davis Fyodor Dostoevsky Robert Bird Arthur Schopenhauer Peter B. Lewis Marcel Duchamp Caroline Cros Adam Smith Jonathan Conlin Sergei Eisenstein Mike O’Mahony Susan Sontag Jerome Boyd Maunsell Michel Foucault David Macey Gertrude Stein Lucy Daniel Mahatma Gandhi Douglas Allen Igor Stravinsky Jonathan Cross Jean Genet Stephen Barber Leon Trotsky Paul Le Blanc Allen Ginsberg Steve Finbow Richard Wagner Raymond Furness Ernest Hemingway Verna Kale Simone Weil Palle Yourgrau Derek Jarman Michael Charlesworth Ludwig Wittgenstein Edward Kanterian Alfred Jarry Jill Fell Frank Lloyd Wright Robert McCarter James Joyce Andrew Gibson Paul Cézanne Jon Kear reaktion books Published by Reaktion Books Ltd Unit 32, Waterside 44–48 Wharf Road London n1 7ux, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2016 Copyright © Jon Kear 2016 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain, Glasgow A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn 978 1 78023 573 8 Contents Introduction: The Myth of Cézanne 7 1 Memories of Youth 32 2 An Artist of Tempérament 58 3 Pissarro, Landscape and Impressionism 99 4 Portrait of a Woman 129 5 Solitary Pleasures 152 6 Provence, the Peasantry and Montagne Sainte-Victoire 178 Epilogue 212 References 219 Select Bibliography 236 Acknowledgements 244 Photo Acknowledgements 245 Paul Cézanne, in 1904, sitting in front of his Les Grandes Baigneuses, photograph by Émile Bernard. Introduction: The Myth of Cézanne In 1904 Émile Bernard, a leading Symbolist painter and critic, made the long trip from Paris to Cézanne’s studio in Aix-en-Provence to interview him for an article he was to publish later that year.1 During his stay he took several photographs of Cézanne. In the most emblematic of these, Cézanne poses in the dim light of his austere studio at Les Lauves, his clasped hands resting on his paint-spattered trousers, before a large work propped on an easel: an elderly artist framed by the fantasia of youthful female nudes on the canvas behind him. The painting was one of three ambitious and idiosyncratic large paintings collectively known as Les Grandes Baigneuses (The Bathers) that preoccupied his later years. These show female bathers set on the edge of a stream, basking in the sun or about to enter the water. Cézanne worked intermittently on more than one canvas at once, making extensive changes as he went along. The one in the photograph is the version from the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia before it underwent several crucial changes. Cézanne had already been labouring a decade on it by then, and it would remain, as its companion paintings would, incomplete at his death. Viewed together as an ensemble, it is clear how interconnected these paintings are and how they were conceived as alternate responses to the possibilities and problems posed by the subject. Preliminary oil sketches indicate that he planned to extend the series. The large scale of these paintings and the fact that he worked on them for such a protracted period indicate the special value 7 Cézanne accorded them. He often remarked to visitors to his studio that these paintings were to be the testing ground for his theories, and it was as such that they were understood by the audience for his painting. They were to become indelibly associated with his legacy. The Barnes version, the first of the series, was clearly intended to be a chef-d’oeuvre, and was conceived on the eve of his re-entry into public exhibition after a long exile from exhibiting in Paris, though it was not shown in his lifetime. In 1907 a major retrospective of 56 pictures at the Salon d’Automne in two rooms of the Grand Palais included two of the late Grandes Baigneuses, almost certainly the London and Philadelphia versions, which became the focus of discussion of the artist. By then Cézanne was dead, having succumbed to pneumonia the previous autumn, aged 67. Already suffering from the degenerative effects of diabetes over the previous sixteen years, he had collapsed in a rainstorm after a day painting in the fields of Aix and lay unconscious and exposed to the elements for several hours. Despite appearing to recover, within days he had passed away. In the course of the twentieth century Cézanne has subsequently been regarded as the father of modern painting and integral to the canon of modernism.2 The Grandes Baigneuses are touchstones of modern painting and provoked a series of emulations by avant- garde artists. The problems Cézanne’s work posed for its original audience have been forgotten.3 But for his contemporaries, Cézanne’s pictures were works whose meanings and implications, whether they were successes or failures, were matters to be struggled over and contested. While it was generally agreed that his art had moved beyond the limits of Impressionism, Cézanne was an artist whose person and work posed more questions than answers and none did so more than his Grandes Baigneuses. It was not clear what intentions underlay these disquieting paintings, nor how they related to the other works and working practices of the painter.4 While his landscapes, portraits and still-lifes, as his letters 8 Les Grandes Baigneuses, 1895–1906, oil on canvas. attest, revealed a commitment to an empirical approach to painting sur le motif (in nature), his bathers seemed the antithesis of all this: strange reveries rendered without models that freely reworked the old masters he had studied in the Louvre, yet in a way that seemed quite contemporary in mood and sensibility. Les Grandes Baigneuses appeared at once to reach back to the past, not merely to the old masters but to something more primordial and archaic, and at the same time to be ultra-modern. These works posed many questions about the artist and the conceptual framework of his late painting. Our knowledge of these later years, like so much of his life, is limited. There are many gaps in his correspondence and years where little is known of his private life and movements. What we know is generally through the reminiscences of fellow artists, critics and early biographers. But those who wrote about him rarely knew him well. Few artists have been subject to so much rumour and speculation and few oeuvres to such contradiction in interpretation. This book is therefore not only about Cézanne’s art and life, but about what can and cannot be known about Cézanne and the myths and interpolations that have entered into the literature of the artist. 9 Cézanne lived a quiet life in relative isolation in Aix-en-Provence and devoted his time indefatigably to painting. What glimpses we get of him in the last twenty years of his life, through his correspondence and the recollections of those who encountered him, reveal a man fiercely protective of his privacy and one with few close friends. In contrast to the ostentatious persona he cultivated as a young man in Paris in the 1860s, which gained him an enduring reputation, he kept a low profile in his native Aix, despite being a wealthy landowner whose family was well known in the town. Notwithstanding his fiery and unpredictable temperament, and his susceptibility towards neurosis, those that visited him were surprised to find him mostly congenial, if a little guarded, and quite willing to talk at length and even demonstrate his method of painting. When Bernard – with some difficulty – finally tracked the artist down, his reputation as a biographical journalist led Cézanne initially to view him with suspicion. It was only when Bernard made clear that he was a painter as well as a biographer that he was welcomed. Cézanne was distrustful of all those he believed sought to get their grappins (hooks) in him, as he put it. His trust was hard- won and reserved mainly for those he had known since youth. While he enjoyed the company of younger artists, regarding them as ‘more intelligent’ than his contemporaries, he remained wary of his newfound admirers.

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