1. Pierre-Auguste Renoir Path Through the High Grass c. 1875

2. Paul Cezanne Chestnut Trees at the Jas de Bouffan in Winter 1885-87

3. Q. Why does Post-Impressionism matter?
A. The increasingly abstract content was highly influential in the development of modernist painting.

4. Paul Cezanne
He painted in complete seclusion in Aix-en-Provence.
The pictorial space is defined solely by rich and subtle gradations of incorporeal color.
Cezanne “had come to feel that a faithful account of what is momentarily seen was of less importance than the examination of his own ‘sensations,’ of his own visual experience, and of the relation of that experience to the object in nature” (Hamilton, 42). 4

5. Paul Cezanne The Bridge at Maincy 18795

6. Paul Cezanne House and the Tree 1873-74
The even lighting, still atmosphere, and absence of human activity in the landscape communicate a sense of timeless endurance which is at odds with the Impressionists’ interest in capturing a momentary aspect of the ever-changing world.
This work demonstrates the artist’s willful disregard for the rules of traditional scientific perspective. 6

7. Paul Cezanne Château de Médan 1879-81

8. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Ville d'Avray 1867

9. Paul Cezanne
Madame Cézanne in Blue 9

10. Paul Cezanne Woman with Coffee Pot 1890
“The ability to maintain a tension between the actual and the illusionary dimensions is a key characteristic of his work. In the technical sense, this tension is produced by Cezanne’s conviction that no distinction can be made between drawing, line, plane, and color” (Hamilton, 44). 10

11. Femme au Chapeau Vert (Woman in a Green Hat. Madame Cézanne)
Paul Cezanne
Femme au Chapeau Vert (Woman in a Green Hat. Madame Cézanne)
1894–1895
“In practice Cezanne sought this fusion of the pictorial elements by small touches of paint which, if correct in hue and value, would create both the distance and the angle of each plane” (Hamilton, 44).
Paul Cezanne
Femme au Chapeau Vert (Woman in a Green Hat. Madame Cézanne)
1894–1895

12. Mary Cassatt Lady at the Tea Table 188512

13. Paul Cezanne
Man Smoking a Pipe
1892 13

14. Paul Cezanne The Card Players 1890-1895

15. Paul Cezanne Cherries and Peaches 1883–1887

16. “Cezanne reveals a profound visual truth: objects in space may be known separately, but when seen together they participate in each other’s existence” (Hamilton, 46).

17. Paul Cezanne Still Life 1890–1894

18. Claude Monet Still Life with Pears and Grapes 1880

19. Paul Cezanne Still Life with Apples and Oranges 1895–1900

20. “Cezanne’s canvases are cumulative records of successive instantaneities. Each picture is not an account of the motif as an element enduring ideally outside ourselves and so beyond the temporal experience: it is built up by deposits of successive and discrete observations which can still be seen in the multiplied contours of objects, in the constant, suffused and embracing light, and in the shifting perspectives in the landscapes and still lifes” (Hamilton, 44).

21. Paul Cezanne Mont Sainte-Victoire 1887

22. The illusion of consistent recession into depth is challenged by the inclusion of blues, pinks, and reds in the foreground foliage, which relate the foreground forms to the background mountain and sky, and by the tree branches in the sky which rhyme with the contours of the mountain, making the peak appear nearer and binding it to the foreground plane” (Stokstad, 1031). Paul Cezanne Mont Sainte-Victoire

23. Cezanne depicted Mount Sainte Victoire at least thirty times in oil from the mid-1880’s until his death.
“The brush strokes, which vary from short, parallel hatchings to sketchy lines to broader swaths of flat color, not only record his “sensations” of nature but also weave every element of the landscape together into a unified surface design” (Stokstad). 23

24. Paul Cezanne Mont Sainte-Victoire 1902-1906

25. Paul Cezanne Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from Les Lauves 1904-1906

26. Paul Cezanne Mont Sainte-Victoire 1904-1906

27. “The picture becomes a record of the continuous present, of the experience of space in the mode of time” (Hamilton, 44).

28. The Nude. Who is it “okay” to show unclothed
The Nude. Who is it “okay” to show unclothed? I mean, where the nudity is part of the story?
Eve, Venus, Diana, Bathsheba….
Ingres and Delacroix show those “others” nude—those harem women….since they are not “white” it is considered okay to show them unclothed….
And Manet goes a little nuts….Olympia and Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe and his paintings drive polite society nuts. But honestly, Manet is merely painting the demi-monde—prostitutes—like Titian painted a courtesan and called it Venus of Urbino.
And no, I don’t even want to make a connection with Canova’s Venus Victrix; to do so would cast aspersions on poor Napoleon’s wayward sister, Paulina. Which reminds me of Madame Pompadour (who was the king’s mistress) and Francois Boucher (Toilette of Venus).
But the Impressionists wanted to liberate the nude from the conventional stories that “allowed” the nude—allegorical and mythological conventions. Which is okay, I guess, but doing so makes the nude seem really unclothed…take a look at Renoir’s Les Grandes Baigneuses, and you will see what I mean….
And Cezanne, well who knows what he was up to…what do we think? (I think he wanted his apples and pears and oranges back.)

29. François Boucher Diana Resting after her Bath 1742

30. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres The Valpinçon Bather 1808

31. Les Grandes Baigneuses
Paul Cezanne
Les Grandes Baigneuses
1898–1905
Paul Renoir
Les Grandes Baigneuses 31

32. Paul Cezanne Les Grandes Baigneuses 1898–1905