Presentation is loading. Please wait.

Presentation is loading. Please wait.

Self-Portrait with Palette

Similar presentations


Presentation on theme: "Self-Portrait with Palette"— Presentation transcript:

1 Self-Portrait with Palette. 1885-87
Paul Cézanne Paul Cezanne is now one of the most famous painters in the world, although he spent most of his life out of the limelight near his hometown, Aiz-en-Provence (āk'säN-prō-väNs', ĕk'-), in the south of France. By painting things in a way that had never been seen before, he shocked people with his new ideas and changed the history of art forever. Self-Portrait with Palette

2 View of Genoa. Jean-Baptist-Camille Corot. 1834
People were used to paintings that showed lots of perspective-the feeling of distance and space. View of Genoa. Jean-Baptist-Camille Corot. 1834

3 Paul didn’t think perspective was always necessary to show the beauty of nature

4 Sometimes Cezanne played tricks with perspective.
Still-Life with Fruit Basket You see the fruit basket, the jar with the lid, and the pitcher from the side, but you are looking at the basket from the top. The left part of the table is lower and more tilted than the right side. Paul Cezanne did this to make your eyes move from the front to the back and all around the painting as a way of giving it depth without using a lot of perspective. Do you see any objects in this painting that look like they were painted from different viewpoints?

5 The Card Players. 1890-92 (52 3/4 x 71 1/2 in)
In some of his paintings, objects, and even people look like they are carved out of clay or chiseled out of stone. Cezanne used lots of color, building up shapes and objects to make them feel solid. Using colors this way was another of Paul’s ideas. The Card Players (52 3/4 x 71 1/2 in)

6 Paul was born into a wealthy family.
He took painting lessons as a young boy. His father wanted him to study law and go into the family business – banking. Paul wanted to study art in Paris. Louis-August Cezanne had a hat shop and became so rich that, by 1848, he was able to buy the only bank in his hometown, Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France. He wanted his son to be a lawyer or work in the bank. Paul’s best friend, Emile Zola, who later became a famous writer, had been living in Paris for quite a while. He encouraged Cezanne to join him there to study painting. To please his father, Paul studied law in college and even worked in the bank for a while. He disliked both of those things and continued to paint and take drawing lessons in his spare time. He even drew pictures on important bank papers to help pass the time. Finally Paul’s mother convinced Mr. Cézanne to let Paul go to Paris, where all the great French artists went to study art and sell their works. Mr. Cézanne finally agreed and even gave Paul a small weekly allowance to live on. One of Cézanne’s greatest wishes was for his father to recognize him as an artist. He has even included one of his own paintings in the background of this portrait. The Artist’s Father

7 David, Jacques-Louis, The Death of Socrates. 1787
In Paris, most artists were painting in a very realistic style, with dark colors and carefully drawn figures. Most young artists were happy to paint in the accepted style of the day. This was the type of painting the was selected by the annual Salon show, the most important art show in France. Since Paul wanted his work to get into the Salon show someday, he started out carefully drawing and painting in a realistic way and studying the Old Masters in the Louvre. Paul was not happy in Paris. Because he was from a small country town and kept to himself a lot, the students in his studio thought he was rude. No one liked his art, and the Salon rejected his paintings. Paul also knew that his father hoped he would fail, so that he would come back and work at the bank. David, Jacques-Louis, The Death of Socrates

8 Paul met a few other young talented art students who were looking for new ways to paint.
Camille Pissarro, The Orchard Paul Cezanne was almost ready to give up. Fortunately, there were some art students he met who knew Paul had a special talent. Two of these artists were Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro. They were part of a group of artists who became known as the Impressionists. The Impressionists were interested in capturing a moment of time during the day in their paintings. They painting outdoors and used feathery brush strokes and lots of bright, beautiful colors to show nature. These were new ideas that Paul Cezanne really liked. Paul began spending a lot of time outdoors. He worked side by side with Camille Pissarro, who turned out to be a great teacher. The Impressionists’ paintings had been rejected by the Salon, also, so they began to have their own exhibitions.

9 How do you think Cezanne felt about this house?
Although Paul Cézanne respected the Impressionists, he thought too many of their paintings were just pretty pictures. He thought his paintings could be much more than that. Paul Cézanne wanted to do more than just depict nature as it looked. He wanted to show how he felt about nature. This was a very exciting new idea in painting, and one that most people didn’t understand. In 1874, Paul entered his painting The House of the Suicide in the Impressionists’ exhibit. As it turned out, the show was a big flop. People thought the paintings looked unfinished. They didn’t like scenes about everyday life as much as those about an important historical event or heroic story. The paintings they disliked the most, though, were Paul Cezanne’s! House of the Hanged Man

10 What do you think Cezanne learned from his Impressionist friends?
Paul always felt more comfortable in his country hometown than in the exciting city of Paris. “And don’t think that I’ll ever become a Parisian,” he wrote to a friend. From 1864 onwards, Cézanne spent a few months each year at his family’s home in Aix en Provence. In 1901 he bought a small piece of land on a hill north of Aix in Les Lauves where he built a house and studio. “I was born here and this is where I shall die.” Jas de Buffan, The Pool

11 Cezanne and his friend Emile Zola played under this tree as children.
The pine forests, the fields and the hills which surrounded Aix provided Cézanne with a lot of inspiration. A poetic conception of the tree as a giant individual, rising to the heavens above the heads of its smaller fellows, twisted in axis and shaken by great forces, but supreme in its height and vast spread. Its rise from the ground is dramatic in its stages: through a sturdy bent trunk, far stronger than any other we see; through a region of bare and dying branches, leafless against the sky; then the great arched crown of foliage spanning almost the entire sky. Cézanne's feeling for the great tree goes back to his youth. In a letter to Zola in 1858, he wrote: ``Do you remember the pine on the bank of the [river] Arc, with its hairy head projecting above the abyss at its foot? This pine which protected our bodies with its foliage from the heat of the sun, oh ! may the gods preserve it from the woodman's baleful axe !'' The Great Pine.

12 Cezanne always tried to simplify the shape of things.
Often he packed everything he needed and set off to work in the countryside. Whenever he found a good motif, he painted it again and again in many different ways. The strange shape of the rocky cliffs in the quarry at Bibémus are the result of blasting and the effects of the wind, rain and frost. Cézanne was fascinated by the rugged architectural forms in the mountains of Provence and painted the same scene from many different angles. In his pictures, Cezanne always tried to simplify the shape of things and to use squares or triangles. He would use bold blocks of color to achieve a new spatial effect known as ``flat-depth'' to accommodate the unusual geological forms of the mountains. Cézanne traveled widely in the Provence region and also enjoyed painting the coast at L'Estaque. Bibemus Quarry. c. 1895

13 Cezanne painted his favorite mountain many times.
The Sainte-Victoire mountain near Cézanne's home in Aix-en-Provence was one of his favorite subjects and he is known to have painted it over 60 times. Le Mont Sainte-Victoire vu de la carrière Bibemus. c. 1897

14 This painting of Sainte-Victoire is a watercolor.
How is it different from the oil painting? How is it similar? Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from Les Lauves

15 Is Madame Cezanne painted realistically?
Do you think the painting is balanced? Do you see any shapes or patterns that are repeated in this portrait? In 1869 the painter fell in love with Hortense Fiquet, a bookbinder and, three years later, they had a son also called Paul. Shapes and patterns repeat themselves in different parts of the picture: The folds in the heavy curtain can also be seen in the skirt over Madame Cézanne’s right knee. The roses in her hands are also part of the pattern of the curtain. The shape of the frame can be found again in the back of the chair. Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress 1890

16 Paul Cézanne worked very slowly and carefully.
Ambroise Vollard was the first art dealer who showed an interest in Cézanne’s paintings. Paul Cézanne worked very slowly and carefully. Ambroise Vollard had to sit 115 times for this portrait! Even Cézanne's pictures of people can be regarded as still lifes, because he demanded that his models sit absolutely still. Sitting for him was something of a nightmare. Not only was he foul-tempered, he was an extremely slow painter, probably the reason his subjects always look tired and somber. Ambroise Vollard, the dealer who arranged Cézanne's first one-man show a century ago, posed 115 times for a single painting, sitting absolutely still "like an apple" and then Cézanne, dissatisfied, abandoned the picture with only two unpainted spots remaining. He told Vollard that with luck he would find the correct color and could finish the painting. "The prospect of this made me tremble," noted Vollard in his biography of the painter. In the artist's eye, there was no difference between a human sitter and a bowl of fruit, except that the reflection value and the palette were different. In the end, both his subjects and his fruit wilted. Portrait of Ambroise Vollard 1899

17 Cezanne is also well know for his “still life” paintings.
When Cezanne wasn’t painting outdoors and when he had no models to paint, he arranged different objects in his studio which he then painted. He was very selective about the objects he painted and positioned them very carefully before starting work. He draped tables with material and rugs, turned every apple round to its best advantage, even tilting them by putting coins underneath to keep them in the position he wanted. Although he only had a few simple objects to work with, Cezanne always managed to produce new still lifes. Still Life with Commode

18 Paul gave as much attention to the backgrounds and space around objects as he did to the main subject. He worked so slowly that the flowers often started to wilt before he finished painting them. He worked so slowly that the flowers often started to wither and the apples would begin to rot before had had finished painting them! He is even supposed to have used paper flowers and artificial fruit sometimes when he needed a little longer! Paul gave as much attention to the backgrounds and space around objects as he did to the main subject. He wanted every square inch on the surface of his canvas to be as balanced and perfect as possible. The Blue Vase.

19 Still Life with Plate of Cherries. 1885-87
When looking closely at the painting, it seems as if there are just lots of blobs of paint. From a distance, the color composition becomes clear and tasty pieces of fruit emerge Still Life with Plate of Cherries

20 Paul Cezanne died in His paintings mattered more to him than anything else in the world. He created a new and different kind of beauty in his artwork that influenced almost every modern artist who came after him. Paul spend many years of his life by himself. He even moved away from his wife and son for long periods of time. He didn’t want anyone interrupting his work. During Paul’s life, hardly anyone noticed or cared about his paintings. Only a few people, including Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gouguin, realized what an important artist Paul was. Many of these soon-to-be-famous artists felt that Paul Cezanne may have been the greatest of them all.


Download ppt "Self-Portrait with Palette"

Similar presentations


Ads by Google