Paul Cézanne

The endless possibilities for arranging a small number of objects into a still life as a means of addressing painterly problems repeatedly posed Cézanne new challenges. In Still life with a sliced-open watermelon, one of his most beautiful and best-preserved watercolours, it is the combination of pencil lines and taches – patches of colour that here are translucent on account of being painted in watercolour – that defines the objects. Another important aspect is how the artist plays with the impression of space and plasticity, for example in the spoon and knife protruding into the picture like the hands of a clock.

Paul Cézanne had a defining influence on the inception of modernism; indeed, his approach to painting revolutionized modern art. By assigning inherent value to a painting’s manner of execution – as distinct from its subject matter – he shifted the focus of art onto the work itself. This was a crucial step in the development of abstract art, which renounces subjects in the traditional sense.

The translation of the three-dimensionality of perceived reality into the two-dimensionality of the pictorial surface – a process Cézanne called réalisation – is quite beautifully exemplified by Forest scene (Path from Mas Jolie to Château noir). Working, as ever, in the open air and in front of the subject, he established the picture’s overall structure with a few thin brushstrokes. Horizontal lines indicate the ground, vertical lines the trees. He rendered every sensory impression that struck his eyes – especially the colour hues – with his famous taches, patches of modulated colour consisting of just a few strokes of the brush from which he built the entire picture. Although his system of coloured taches is independent of the subject, the painting still vividly captures the atmosphere of the woods around Montagne Sainte-Victoire near Aix-en-Provence.

The painting Bend of the road at the Top of the Chemin des Lauves shows a stretch of road just uphill from the studio the artist had set up for himself in 1902. Whereas the two forest scenes by Cézanne in the Fondation Collection have a loose, airy quality, here the paint is applied in thick impasto that more clearly accentuates the structure and gives the paint as a material an almost palpable feel.