The Lost Talent – Arts and Entertainment

Paul Cezanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavor to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century’s new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism.

Cézanne’s work demonstrates a mastery of design, color, composition and draftsmanship. His often repetitive, sensitive and exploratory brush strokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable.
Cézanne’s explorations of geometric simplification and optical phenomena inspired Picasso, Braque, Gris, and others to experiment with ever more complex multiple views of the same subject

Birth, Education and Childhood

Paul Cezanne was born On January 19, 1839 in Aix-en-Provence in France to a successful retailer and his mistress.

In 1849, Paul started studying drawing at Saint Joseph school in Aix. At 13 Cezanne attended Bourbon College in Aix where he met Emile Zola and Baptistin Baille. These three were known as known as “les trois inseparables. This friendship was to last almost a lifetime. Cezanne attended classes at a local drawing academy.

The Card Players

In 1861, Paul left Aix for Paris to develop his artistic talents. In Paris, Cézanne met the Impressionist Camille Pissarro. Earlier it was more of a master and pupil relationship but over the course of the following decade their landscape painting excursions together, in Louveciennes and Pontoise, led to a collaborative working relationship between equals.

Work Life

His early work is often concerned with the figure in the landscape and comprises many paintings of groups of large, heavy figures in the landscape, imaginatively painted. Later in his career, he became more interested in working from direct observation and gradually developed a light, airy painting style that was to influence the Impressionists enormously.

During 1870 – 1878, they moved to Auvers in Val-d’Oise near Paris. There, he and Camille Pissarro painted landscapes together. Under Pissarro’s influence Cézanne began to abandon dark colors and his canvases grew much brighter.

He concentrated on a few subjects and was highly unusual for 19th-century painters in that he was equally proficient in each of these genres: still life, portraits, landscapes and studies of bathers.
In his late fifties Cezanne’s paintings finally began to attract the attention they deserved. In 1895, Ambroise Vollard, the famous art dealer, organised an exhibit of Cezanne’s work in Paris.