Letters from ‘father of modern art'

Press, 12 November 1977, Page 17

Letters from ‘father of modern art '

Paul Cezanne: Letters. Edited by John Rewald. Bruno Cassirer. 366 pp. $16.80.

(Reviewed by Joan Curry)

Paul Cezzane (1839-1906) has been called the father of modern art and the greatest painter of the last hundred years. He once wrote: “I thought one could do good painting without attracting attention to one’s private life. Certainly an artist wishes to raise himself intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain obscure.” He wrote this in his later years when he had become something of a recluse, disgruntled by the lack of understanding of his work shown by the general public; He would almost certainly have been displeased at the thought of his personal letters being published, but perhaps the wide acknowledgement accorded his contribution to art would have mellowed him, had he lived to enjoy it. As it is, we read his letters in order to fill out the portrait of a man who was determined to let his work speak for itself. This book is a revised and enlarged edition of Cezanne’s letters first published in English in 1941. They are the letters of a simple man who was highly intellectual in his approach to painting. The letters of his youth, mainly to the novelist Emile Zola, show a light-hearted exuberance in spite of frequent references to

problems with his father. The elder Cezanne, a rick banker, disapproved of his son’s desire to paint and Cezanne found the weight of parental censure oppressive until his father died in .1886. Zola’s letters, included here in the interests of continuity, contain much bracing advice and moral support during the 30 years that the friendship lasted. Cezanne sometimes needed more than moral support; he was dependent on his father for a small allowance, liable to be withheld on paternal whim, and Zola frequently obliged with financial help as well. The letters of Cezanne’s middle years reflect his thoughts on literature and painting in general, without giving much away on the direction of his own work. He formed a liaison with Hortense Fiquet who bore him a son in 1872, but the existence of this little family had to be kept from his father, who still continued to rule with a heavy hand and sharply suspicious eye. An increased allowance was out of the question in these circumstances and Zola was often asked to send Hortense 60 francs for her maintenance. The mature Cezanne, over 30 when he met Hortense, acknowledged his responsibilities but did not allow anything to interfere with his work; keeping his father in ignorance was essential to his purpose. Cezanne’s genius was not widely recognised until the very end of his life. The jury of the Salon Officiel refused his work year after year and

although he exhibited elsewhere he never gave up hope of having his work accepted by the Salon. Zola wrote to a mutual friend: “In spite of his slightly affected comtempt of fame, I see that he would like to arrive.” It is difficult to imagine what effect such recognition might have had on Cezanne’s work, but the lack of it drove him into virtual retirement, leaving him free to develop in isolation. As he grew older he became somewhat testy and inclined to brush off friends and acquaintances with little cause. On his work Cezanne was not inclined to be forthcoming, and thanks are due to the young painter Emile Bernard who asked the questions that forced Cezanne to express his own views about painting in letters included here. Cezanne was a contemporary of the Impressionists and absorbed their theories about light and movement and shape. He then took things a stage further and made of the fleeting brilliance of Impressionism something solid and durable, using his brush like a knife to carve out landscapes, still-lifes and portraits as though out of clay or stone. His disciplined search for harmony of form and colour led to the true subject of his pictures, the order underlying the external world. He was the first of the post-impressionists and the forerunner of Cubism. Let us give him the last word: “Art is a harmony which runs parallel with nature — what is one to think of those imbeciles who say that the artist is always inferior to nature?”