1. Paul Cézanne

2. Photo of Paul Cézanne in front of The Bathers.

3. Artistic Purpose
To convey the message that his pictures were flat, painted canvases, not imitations of reality.
To paint nature convincingly so as to reveal its basic structures and their relationships in space: “Interpret nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone…”.

4. Artistic Credo
A painting is an artistic composition separate from reality—a creation rather than a reproduction.
Creation must be based on the contemplation of nature.
For the sake of composition, objects are distorted, reduced into basic geometrical shapes, and presented from multiple points of view.

5. Portraits
The sitter is not portrayed as an individual nor within the context of social criticism.
The human head, like an apple, can be seen as nothing more than a convenient geometric starting point for a composition in which every element was treated with equal respect and attention.

6. Paul Cézanne. Portrait of
Madame Cézanne in the
Greenhouse (ca. 1890).
Oil on canvas.

7. Paul Cézanne.
Portrait of Madame
Cézanne in a Yellow
Chair ( ).
Oil on canvas.

8. Cézanne’s wife Marie-Hortense
photographed in 1900 at the
age of 50.

9. Still Lifes: A Challenge in the Investigation of Visual Perception
A means of creating a new reality: making observers aware that what they were looking at was an image on a two-dimensional canvas
A means of achieving a canvas that could be appreciated for itself as a solidly composed structure of forms and colors
A means of expressing multiple points of view simultaneously

10. Paul Cézanne. Still Life: Basket of Apples (1880-90). Oil on canvas.

11. Paul Cézanne. Still Life with Apples and Oranges
( ). Oil on canvas.

12. Paul Cézanne.
Still Life with Vase
of Flowers and Apples
( ).
Oil on canvas.

13. Paul Cézanne. Still Life with Basket of Fruit
( ). Oil on canvas.

14. Multiple Points of View

15. Paul Cézanne. Still Life with Dresser
( ). Oil on canvas.

16. Landscapes—Mont Sainte-Victoire
Exercises in painting the mountain from different points of view
Exercises in neutralizing the effects of perspective in favor of a unified picture space: developing an independent harmonious composition in “harmony in parallel with nature”
Exercises in editing
Exercises in expressing nature as architecture

17. The landscape round Aix-en-Provence with the
Mont Sainte Victoire.

18. Mont Sainte-Victoire
Ready for a day’s work

19. Paul Cézanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire from
the Chemin de Velcros (1879). Oil on canvas.

20. Paul Cézanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire
from Bellevue ( ). Oil on canvas.

21. Abandons Linear Perspective
Perspective is not achieved through lines of sight converging on a common vanishing point.
Isolated diagonals and verticals, in the form of paths, aqueducts, or towering pine trees cut through the compositions to give the impression of depth
Passage (overlapping planes of color) create the impression of depth

22. Overlapping Planes: Passage
The surface of the image is composed of horizontal areas
of color set side by side and interlinking the separate spatial fields. Progressing through one spatial field after another, the alternating brown and green areas provide a sense of depth.

23. Paul Cézanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire (1885-87). Oil on canvas.

24. Paul Cézanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire from the Large Pine (1885-87)
Paul Cézanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire from the Large Pine ( ). Oil on canvas.

25. Paul Cézanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire (1889). Oil on canvas.

26. Photograph of the site

27. Photograph of the site

28. Paul Cézanne. Road Near Mont Sainte-Victoire (1900).
Oil on canvas.

29. Photograph of the site

30. Paul Cézanne. Bibémus: The Red Rock (1897-98). Oil on canvas.

31. Paul Cézanne. Quarry and Mont Sainte-Victoire from
Bibémus (1897). Oil on canvas.

32. Detail of Quarry and Mont Sainte-Victoire from Bibémus (1897).

33. Photograph of the site

36. View of the quarry

37. Cézanne’s Compositional Methods
Size
Central axis
Color
Form

38. This illustration shows that Cézanne has
more than doubled the size of the mountain.

39. This is an illustration of the principle of organization so
Often used by Cézanne: planes and volumes moving around an imaginary central axis.

40. The orange and green shapes are here reduced to two-dimensional patterns emphasizing how Cézanne
interlocks and interweaves the pictorial surface.

41. The mass of the mountain is shown here in combination with
the small white shapes to which it is related. Without these
small shapes the mountain would be isolated. Here the two are
interrelated through distribution and repetition.

42. Paul Cézanne. Bibémus Quarry (1895). Oil on canvas.

43. Paul Cézanne. Bibémus
Quarry (1898). Oil on
canvas.

44. Paul Cézanne. Mountains in Provence
(ca. 1890). Oil on canvas.

45. Paul Cézanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Chateau Noir
( ). Oil on canvas.

46. Two views of the Chateau Noir with the Mont Sainte-Victoire
in the background

47. Photograph of the site from Lauves.

48. Paul Cézanne.
Mont Sainte Victoire
( ).
Oil on canvas.

49. Paul Cézanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire from
Les Lauves ( ). Oil on canvas.

50. Paul Cézanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from Lauves (1902-04).
Oil on canvas.

51. The Bathers Exercises in painting figures in landscapes
Settings and figures have equal emphasis
Integration of style and subject
Multiple points of view

52. Paul Cézanne. Great Bathers (1894-1905). Oil on canvas.

53. Paul Cézanne. Les Grandes Baigneuses (1900-05). Oil on canvas.

54. Paul Cézanne. Great Bathers (1894-1905).Oil on canvas.

55. Cézanne’s studio