Artist Cezanne Paul: biography, work and self-portrait

What is the difference between a talented artist and a genius? It happens that a person from childhood amazes everyone with his artistic abilities, and others predict a brilliant future for him, but growing up, he becomes only one of many. And it happens the other way round: no one sees anything remarkable in a child or a young man, but after a while everyone suddenly begins to notice what he is doing magnificently and brilliantly. Cezanne Paul refers to these artists.

Childhood of the artist

Biography of Paul Cezanne is interesting and unusual. However, unless there can be an ordinary life of the ingenious artist? And it all began in late 1839. It was then, on December 19, in the French town of Aix-en-Provence, a baby was born, who was given the name Paul. The father of the future artist - Louis Auguste - was a rich man. At first he traded felt hats, and then began to slowly raise money and, quickly realizing the advantages of such a business, opened his own banking business in the city.

The mother of Paul Cezanne was a saleswoman from a hat shop. She was a modest and poorly educated woman, but she loved her son to the point of insanity and could protect herself from her father's harsh temper. Preserved only her picture in the picture "Girl behind the piano," on which Paul's mother sits in the background with handicrafts in hand.

The character of Cezanne the elder was really "not sugar." In the city he was not loved, since he was known as a cruel and very stingy man. Cezanne Paul also did not like his father and was afraid of him. For many years he suffered greatly from his dependent position in the parental home. But we must admit that, despite the severity and harsh temper, the father took good care of the formation of the boy and gave his son to study in the most prestigious school of the city - the Bourbon College.

Years of school and character formation

Paul Cezanne was a capable and diligent student. He excellently coped with mathematics and was very fond of writing essays. Particular passion for the future artist was poetry. Cezanne Paul learned by heart almost all Virgil and Homer. He had an excellent memory, and even after many years he could freely quote these poets by heart.

It's amazing that the school boy did not love the school lessons of drawing, but was afraid of them, although he felt a strong desire for art. At that time, no one, including Paul himself, could even think that he would someday be a real artist. At school, his academic success was repeatedly celebrated with commendable diplomas. Father hoped that his son would follow in his footsteps and become a continuer of the family business. He forced Paul after graduating from school to enroll in a law faculty at a local university.

Uneasy relations in the family and internal contradictions did not have a better impact on the formation of the character of the young Cezanne. He grew up closed and unsociable, so he remained for life. People have always irritated the artist, he has avoided light and vanity all his life and found comfort and consolation only in painting.

Friendship with Emile Zola

The only friend of Paul Cezanne for many years was Emile Zola. They met in the junior classes of the school, as they studied together. The children were brought together by one unpleasant incident: little Zola was constantly teased at school for lisping, once classmates beat him, and Paul stood up for a classmate. This marked the beginning of their 40-year friendship.

Cezanne Paul appreciated this relationship, because it was difficult to get along with people and, apart from Zola, he had no friends. It's amazing that Emil Zola was very fond of drawing at school and so succeeded in this discipline that he was foretold the artist's career. But Cezanne, by contrast, most succeeded literary creativity, and others thought that he would be a writer. But it turned out the other way around.

After graduation, Emil goes to Paris and urges Paul to come with him. But the young man does not dare disobey the despotic father and remains in his hometown. But the friendship continued for a long time, until Emile Zola did not write a work called "Creativity", in the main character of which - a loser and a suicide - Cezanne recognized himself.

Painting Training

That's the end of school years! Young Cezanne, at the insistence of his father, studies at the university, but at the same time he begins to attend painting classes at the local school-studio and even equips his own art studio in his father's estate. Art more and more carries him. He is all the way to Paris, and finally his father, yielding to persistent requests and persuasions, releases him to the capital.

Now Cezanne has the opportunity to learn the art of drawing and painting in the famous Suisse Academy. Paul often visits the Louvre, where he eagerly copies the paintings of great artists: Rubens, Delacroix, Titian. The first independent works of Paul Cezanne are gloomy and romantic, permeated by the influence of the creativity of these painters. On the other hand, in the early paintings of Cezanne, his strong emotional experiences of that period were reflected.

The first steps in art

The young artist has a hard time in the capital, the society does not accept it, considering this provincial to be too gloomy and uncouth. He goes back to his father, tries to work in his office, but then returns to Paris again, because he feels that he can not live without painting. This period of throwing lasted for ten years and was accompanied by severe depression.

The first paintings that the artist exhibited in the Paris salons did not bring him any success. The public and criticism did not accept his "strange", unusual view of this world. At that time, the only person who supported him was Emil Zola. Cezanne worked monstrously, trying to understand the secrets of the craft, but the success was yet to come.

Acquaintance with Camille Pissarro

Years passed, Paul Cézanne - an artist and a man - passed the first storm of passion, becoming calmer and more balanced. In his life there is a significant event - an acquaintance with the famous Impressionist Kamil Pissarro. This artist gives Cezanne advice to make his palette brighter, teaches him the technique of a separate smear. This period of creativity Cezanne - from 1872 to 1879. - can be called impressionistic.

The main genre of this time was the landscape. Cezanne Paul and Pissarro often work together on the same motives, however, they use different means at the same time. Despite the strong influence of Impressionism and Pissarro on his work, Cezanne never became a complete adherent of this trend in painting.

He was strangers to the Impressionist aspirations to show the momentary state of the surrounding world, its volatility and fragility. He rather perceived the environment as something unshakable, subject to strict harmony. The geometry of space will never cease to play an important role for it.

Personal life of the artist

Paul Cezanne's biography would be incomplete without a short account of his personal life. As already mentioned, Cezanne had few attachments, he was a misanthrope, avoided people, new acquaintances and women. And yet in 1869 he met a girl to whom he really became attached. Her name was Maria-Hydrangea Fike, she worked as a model and was 11 years younger than the artist. Cezanne married the girl and subsequently she served him as a model for more than forty paintings. In 1872, Hortense gave birth to Paul son. And although the spouses were quite different people in their habits and perception of the world and mostly lived separately (Cezanne - in his estate in Provence, and Hortense - in Paris), still this woman was the only one in the life of the maestro.

Cezanne's paintings

Paul Cezanne, whose work has left a deep imprint in the hearts of contemporaries, was a real hermit and a workaholic. He left behind more than 800 paintings, written in oil. And this is not counting the many drawings and works done in the watercolor technique, which was especially fascinated in the last creative period by Paul Cézanne.

Here are the names of some of his most famous paintings: "Bridge in the Forest" (1880), "Houses in Provence near Estac" (1882), "Sea in Estaca" (1885), "Portrait of Madame Cezanne" (1887) ), "View of Gardanne" (1886), "Mount St. Victoria" (1890). All these and many other landscapes were written by the great Paul Cézanne. Still lifes occupy a special place in his work. Once in school years, having received a basket of apples from Emil Zola as a gift, he said the phrase: "I will conquer Paris with apples." This exclamation of the child became prophetic. After many years, his numerous magnificent still lifes with apples really conquered the capital of France.

The maestro worked in different genres. Along with landscapes and still lifes, he has many self-portraits, portraits and genre paintings, mostly written in oil.

last years of life

In the last years of his life, the artist was sick with diabetes, but still worked a lot and fruitfully. Only at the end of the creative and life path to Cezanne came the success, which, however, he did not seek. The painter was a real recluse, contemptuous of worldly vanity and lived, worshiping only holy art.

Many art critics believe that the work of this master of painting, his artistic findings and the personality itself were so grandiose and grand that all this together had a huge impact on many subsequent generations of painters. Paul Cezanne, whose brief biography is set out in this article, died at the age of 67, in October 1906. Now his paintings are worth millions of dollars, and their cost is increasing every year. In conclusion, I want to say a few words about where you can see his work.

Works by Paul Cezanne in Russia

In various museums of our country there are many works of the French post-impressionist. In St. Petersburg, in the Hermitage, you can see his still lifes Fruits, Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, Still Life with Drapery, landscapes Big Pine near Aix, Blue Landscape, Mount St. Victoria. There you can see how Paul Cézanne looked - "Self-portrait in a Casket", painted by the artist between 1873-1875, is also in the Hermitage. In Moscow, in the Pushkin Museum, in the permanent exposition there are painted paintings "Pierrot and Harlequin", "Bridge on the Marne in Creteil", "Road in Pontoise", etc.