Paul Cezanne

1. Paul Cezanne By Denise Jackson

2. Paul Cezanne was born in a French town in 1839. To show his love for nature, he painted things in a way that had never been seen before. Cezanne shocked people with his new ideas and changed the history of art forever!

3. People were shocked with Paul’s art because they thought his paintings looked too flat. They were used to paintings that showed lots of perspective – the feeling of distance and space. Paul thought that since the surface of a painting was flat, it made sense to paint objects so that they fit better on a flat surface. He didn’t think perspective was always necessary to show the beauty of nature.

4. Sometimes Cezanne would show several different views in one painting. In Still Life with Fruit Basket, you can see the side of the fruit basket at the same time you’re looking at the top of the ginger jar next to it. The left part of the table is lower and more tilted than the right side. He did this to make your eye 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.

5. Cezanne also used lots of color, building up shapes and objects to make them feel solid. In some of his paintings, even the people seem like they’re chiseled out of stone or carved out of clay. Using colors this way was another new idea of Paul’s.

6. Cezanne came from a wealthy family. His father was very strict. Paul only had a few friends while he was growing up. His father never gave Cezanne much encouragement, and when Paul graduated from high school and wanted to study art his father gave him a hard time. His father wanted him to be a lawyer. Even though Paul’s father didn’t think much of artists he did allow Paul to paint his portrait and paint murals on the walls of their home.

7. To please his father, Paul studied Law and worked at his father bank. He spent as much of his spare time as he could taking art classes. Finally Cezanne’s mother convince his father to let him study in Paris, France. It was were all the great artists went to study art and sell their work. Paul’s father finally agreed and gave him a weekly allowance to live on, while in Paris.

8. When Paul arrived in Paris he found an art studio to study in. It was filled with many young artists, most of whom were happy to paint in the accepted style of the day. This style was pretty realistic looking, with dark color and carefully drawn figures. This was the type of painting that was selected by the Salon, the most important art show in France. Cezanne began painting in this style, but got restless doing the same old thing. The Salon did not accept any of Paul’s paintings. The Oath of the Horatii by Jacques Louis David

9. Paul Cezanne was ready to give up, but fortunately there were some other art students looking for new ways to paint things. They were Claude Monet and Camille Pissaro and they showed Paul how much more fun it was to paint outdoors than in a dark, stuffy studio. They showed Cezanne how they used lots of bright, beautiful colors to show nature. Paul liked these new ideas and began spending a lot of time outdoors. He worked side by side with Pissaro, who turned out to be a great teacher.

10. Monet and Pissarro were part of a group of artists who became known as the Impressionists. The Impressionists invited Paul to join them in an exhibit they were having. It turned out to be a big flop. People thought the paintings look unfinished. They didn’t like the scenes about everyday life. But the paintings they disliked the most were Cezanne’s. Paul was so insulted that he decided to leave Paris and return home to paint pictures the way he thought they should be done. Paul no longer cared what anyone thought.

11. Paul began working harder than ever to express his deepest feelings, with simple, solid shapes and beautiful colors. It was during this time that Cezanne created his greatest works of art.

12. He always worked very slowly and carefully. Paul made his art dealer, Ambroise Vollard, sit 115 times for this portrait! Cezanne insisted that Ambroise sit perfectly still, and had a fit if he moved even an inch.

13. Paul Cezzane gave as much attention to the backgrounds and space around objects in his paintings 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.

14. 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 Gauguin, realized what an important artists Cezanne was. Many of these soon-to-be-famous artists felt that Paul Cezanne may have been the greatest of them all.

15. Paul Cezanne died in 1906. 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 who came after him.

16. Bibliography • Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists: Paul Cezanne by Mike Venezia