By James Brewer
A French coastal village with a tranquil view of the Gulf of Marseilles is the place where “Cezanne became Cezanne.”
Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) was lauded as the “greatest of us all” by Claude Monet. Matisse and Picasso were said to have agreed that Cezanne “is the father of us all.”
At the small community of L’Estaque, the artist found the conditions and inspiration he needed to thrive, laying the groundwork for generations of experimenting artists to break the rules with such dynamic breakthroughs as Cubism, Fauvism, and other standard-bearers of the avant-garde.
What is billed as a once-in-a-generation exhibition of Cezanne’s paintings, watercolours and drawings has opened at Tate Modern, overlooking the Thames in London, and its masterly display does indeed convey the excitement of a privileged viewing.
The EY Exhibition: Cezanne assembles some 80 works from collections in Europe, Asia, North and South America, giving UK audiences their first opportunity in more than 25 years to explore at close quarters the pioneering chapters of Cezanne’s career. Still life paintings, Provençale landscapes, portraits, and scenes of bathers, include 20 works never seen in the UK.
Tate has brought over the show from the Art Institute of Chicago, which has an enviable collection of Cezanne’s oeuvre, and where it attracted around 190,000 visitors.
Cezanne cherished his origins in Provence. His name these days is most often spelt Cézanne, but he started using an accent over the ‘e’ only when he arrived in Paris in the 1860s because people struggled to pronounce his name. The painter never signed his name with an accent, a device foreign to the local dialect of Provence. Tate agreed to use the name without the accent after a request by Philippe Cezanne, the artist’s great-grandson and honorary president of the Cezanne Society.
One room here is dedicated to the seminal series from his years spent in of the red-roofed village of L’Estaque, and the way it is laid out visitors can imagine themselves at the painter’s easel. His landscapes such as The Sea at L’Estaque (1878–79), with its beguiling blue stretch of water, have been called the first masterpieces of the mature Cezanne.
How did the artist end up spending much of his life at L’Estaque? He had been attempting to launch his career as a painter in Paris, but decamped in July 1870, partly to avoid being called up for service in the Franco-Prussian war. With him was Marie-Hortense Fiquet, whom he married in 1886. The move was also a ruse to prevent his over-bearing father from discovering his initially informal relationship with Marie-Hortense. Cezanne knew the village from holidays spent there in his youth.
Over the next 15 years Cezanne made more than 40 paintings of the village, its cliffs, and rugged surroundings with a view over to the great port city, including the sea seen from behind the trees.
By day, the sun brought out a glinting and sharp string of colours, and, writing from L’Estaque in 1883, Cezanne adds: “Climbing the hills as the sun goes down, one has a glorious view of Marseille in the background and the islands, all enveloped towards evening to very decorative effect.” Fascinatingly, in the exhibition we see his sketchbook from the time.
As a teenager, Cezanne thought of himself first as a poet, and began painting at school. Determined to succeed as an artist he moved to Paris in the 1860s, at a time when the French capital was rocked by social upheaval. There, he was constantly rejected by the art establishment (as was to be the case for much of his life), but at least the city gave him the opportunity to make studies of the sculptures and paintings in the national museums, and at an independent school to sketch models. An unexpected example is the striking portrait Scipio of 1866-8 (Museu de Arte de São Paulo) an African model whom Cezanne met at the Académie Suisse – an alternative arts school. Monet acquired that portrait and kept it in his bedroom beside other favourite paintings,
A further decisive factor was meeting Camille Pissarro, who became his friend and mentor, and together with other young artists they pushed forward the Impressionist revolution. After a while, he disassociated himself from this trend and the wider Parisian art scene to set out on his own radical path.
Rather than the dreamscapes of some of his contemporaries, his works focus on the everyday and on the splendid Provençal scenery before his eyes. One can appreciate this especially by gazing in a room at the exhibition of dramatic paintings of the limestone Mont Sainte-Victoire, which traces the evolution of his style through that single motif. Mont Sainte-Victoire from 1902-06, owned by Philadelphia Museum of Art arrives in the UK for the first time.
At gentle pace, the exhibition charts Cezanne’s artistic development from early paintings of his twenties to works completed in the final months of his life. Many familiar names occur along the way, such as his childhood friend Émile Zola. Other artists collecting Cezanne’s works including Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Henry Moore.
Tate Modern’s show gives a British audience a first chance to see The Basket of Apples c 1893 (The Art Institute of Chicago), and Still Life with Milk Pot, Melon, and Sugar Bowl 1900-06 (private collection). New research into the colours, compositions and techniques used in these works reveal how the artist’s bold approach opened a window to techniques that continue to influence painters today.
One section brings together magnificent examples of Cezanne’s bather paintings, a lifelong study of the human form for the artist. The National Gallery’s Bathers 1894–1905, one of his largest and most celebrated paintings created in the final stage of his career, is bathed in exotic shades of blue. Such figures he drew from his imagination: he rarely painted nudes from life. Ingenious use of one of his many pigments of blue is seen too in his signature still life painting, often with blue drapery making planes of colour to sharpen contrast with the objects – rather than using the play of light favoured by other exponents.
The exhibition spotlights his most intimate relationships, particularly with his wife and their son Paul, memorably captured in paintings such as Madame Cezanne in a Red Armchair from around 1877 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and Mme Cezanne in a Yellow Chair 1888-90 (Art Institute of Chicago).
The popularity of Cezanne in Britain owes much to the textile magnate, art collector and philanthropist Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947) who championed unfashionable Impressionists and Post-Impressionists including Cezanne. For instance, he snapped up masterpieces from Norwegian collectors including shipowners hit financially by an industry downturn after World War I.
The EY Exhibition: Cezanne is curated by Natalia Sidlina, curator of international art at Tate Modern; Gloria Groom, chair of painting and sculpture of Europe and David and Mary Winton Green curator at the Art Institute of Chicago; Caitlin Haskell, Gary C and Frances Comer curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago; and Michael Raymond, assistant curator, international art, Tate Modern.
Michel Driessen, sponsoring partner of the EY Arts Programme, said that the exhibition presented a fresh perspective on one of the most important figures in twentieth century art, and marked the tenth collaboration as part of the EY Tate Arts Partnership.
A further supporter is the Huo Family Foundation (UK) Ltd which has given Tate Galleries £200,000 to support its Cezanne and Zanele Muholi exhibitions. South African artist Zanele Muholi’s show was open to the public for just 29 days during the height of the covid-19 pandemic and will reopen in 2023.
The Cezanne exhibition is presented in Tate Modern’s Eyal Ofer Galleries, named after a son of the late shipping chief Sammy Ofer. The Eyal Ofer Family Foundation has been a leading patron of Tate Modern, donating $15.2m in 2013 to help fund a new building which increased the museum’s size by 60%.
Captions in detail:
The Bay of Marseille, seen from L’Estaque. c 1885. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. Mr and Mrs Matin A Ryerson Collection.
Auvers panoramic view. 1873-5. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. Mr and Mrs Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection.
All about L’Estaque in this room.
Still Life with Apples. 1893–894. The J Paul Getty Museum.
Bathers c 1894- 1905. Presented by the National Gallery, purchased with a special grant and the aid of the Max Rayne Foundation, 1964.
Mont Sainte-Victoire. 1902-6. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Helen Tyson Madeira, 1977.
The François Zola Dam (Mountains in Provence). 1877-8. Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum of Wales.
Mme Cezanne in a Yellow Chair. 1888-90. Art Institute of Chicago. Wilson L Mead Fund.
Cezanne is at Tate Modern until March 12, 2023. Open daily 10.00 – 18.00.
