BOOKS.
PAUL CE.ZANNE.*
Tan appearance of M. Ambroise Vollard's monograph on Paul Menne gives the British public their first reasonable opportunity of judging an artist who has hitherto been chiefly known to them through the alarums and excursions of critical controversy. We have now for the first time access to a really representative collection of the artist's works, for M. Vollard's book contains more than one hundred and fifty reproductions of paintings and drawings, of which fifty at least occupy a full page and two are admirably done in colour. Further, M. Vollard, though ho attempts little in the way of criticism or connected biography, gives a copious supply of what, after the artist's actual work, is the most important material for its comprehension—namely, the artist's own statement of his ideals and intentions. M. Vollard enjoyed Cezanne's friend- ship during the last ten years of the latter's life, and he has a power of lively description which enables him to put before us a very vivid and substantial portrait of his friend.
Paul Cezanne was born at Aix-en-Provence in 1839, the son of a hatter of that town, whose family are said to have come originally from Italy. The painter's father was a man of strong character and material views, proud, independent, and cautious, a great contrast to his wife, to whose tempestuous and restless spirit one can trace many of the characteristics of her son. The most notable event of Cezanne's youth was his devoted friendship with his schoolfellow Emile Zola, the influence of which upon the most formative years of his life must have been enormous. Zola had the highest hopes for his friend's future in the profession for which he early began to show the most passionate aspiration, and (unexpectedly enough) his influence was always exerted most strongly against the rising tide of realism. Unfortunately,, Cezanne's father, who had now risen from the trade of hatter to the profession of banker, did not share Zola's estimate of his son's capacity, and it was only after a struggle that Paul was able to join his friend in Paris, and devote himself completely to painting. Success, which even at the end of his long career was grudging and partial, did not attend his earliest efforts. He was refused admission to the Ecole dos Beaux Arts, and had reason to fear a fresh attempt to make a banker of him. But, by an odd trick of character, the son's failure aroused the father's pride. " Moi, GSzanne, je n'ai pu avoir fait un cretin ! " exclaimed the banker, and from that moment Paul had no
more to fear from paternal interruption. • The friendship with Zola now began to languish. Zola grew successful and mingled with the world, while Cezanne, with his provincial manners, explosive temper, uncouth language, and general air of shaggy independence, remained incorrigibly Bohemian. While his friend was entertaining the younger aristocracy of art and letters in his neat apart- ments, Cezanne would be sleeping on a bench in the Luxem- bourg Gardens, using his shoes as a pillow to keep them safe from passing tramps. None the less he made acquaintance, through Zola's introduction, with Menet and the other leaders of the then rising school of Impressionism, under whose aegis he exhibited regularly during the first fifteen years of his work in Paris. M. Vollard, however, makes it plain (and this view is contrary to what has sometimes been stated by English writers) that he was from the first hostile to the Impressionist theory. " Monet n'est qu'un call," he would exclaim, adding, however, regretfully, " mais, bon Dieu, quel mil I " He admired Menet as the man who had been able to re-create a simple formula in a conventional and sophis- ticated world (Daumier's eulogy, " He has brought us back to the knave of hearts," will be remembered), but he lamented the great artist's lapse into Impressionism, and his attitude was symbolized in a large " Nouvelle Olympia " which he designed as a criticism of Manet's famous canvas.
• Paul Ctqattne. • Par Ambrolao Vollard. Parla: Galeria A. Vollard, 0 tare Latitte. [100 fr.] picture was in Cezanne's romantic period, the productions of which (though marked by many of the same peculiarities of manner as his later work) show a striving after dramatic effect in which one can perhaps trace the influence of Daumier and Delacroix, both of whom he cordially admired. This style he abandoned towards .the end of the " eighties," when he ceased to show with the Impressionists.
His character and ideals were now formed, and from this time onward ho withdrew gradually into himself, spending more and more of each year at his beloved Aix, whither he finally retired for good in about 1899. Cezanne had always a kind of horror of the world. " C'eat effrayant, la vie," was a favourite expression of his. He hated any one, oven his own son, to whom he was devoted, to touch him. To be watched, when painting, infuriated him. He was mortally terrified of women, whom he always suspected darkly of a desire " me mettre le grappin dessus." Painting and the affection of one or two persons were the sole ties which bound him to the world. At his art he toiled incredibly and insatiably. When a picture displeased him (and he was seldom satisfied) he would hack it to pieces with a palette-knife or throw it out of the window. Each large canvas cost him innumerable sketches, and many involved a labour of years. M. Vollard tells us that for his own portrait he gave tho painter one hundred and fifteen sittings. " J'ai une petite sensation," GSzanne used to lament ; " mais je n'arrive pas a m'exprimer. Je slue comme qui possederait une piece d'or sans pouvoir s'en servir." Or again " Chez mci la realisation do mes sensations est toujours tree penible. Je ne puis arriver a l'intensite qui se developpe b. Ines sons." Of the absolute and almost childish sincerity of his efforts at self-expression there can be no doubt. He never seems to have tried to sell his work, and during the greater part of his life the only attempt which he made to gain public recognition was to send annually with a touching naïveté to the Salon, where his work was of course regularly rejected. Of theories with regard to art he would seem to have had few, and none that was consistent or all-embracing. His " refaire lo Poussin sur la nature—toute la chose est la," is often quoted, and throughout the greater part of his life in Paris he spent many hours of each week in studying and enjoying the old masters. On the other hand, in certain moods ho spoke of the paramount necessity of developing one's own personality, of the supreme importance of " temperament " (he found even Corot lacking in " tommperammenn," as M. Vollard spells his strong Aixois dialect for us). Again, he was fond of insisting on the necessity of developing one's art in close contact with Nature, and he worked out of doors like a true Impressionist. Yet he frequently painted his still- life pieces from artificial flowers, because the real ones withered too quickly, and sometimes he found that even these changed colour before ho had finished with thorn, and was forced to resort to engravings from books or illustrated papers. As for the living models, his demands were so exacting and so forcibly expressed that he could seldom procure sitters. Moreover, his ever-present fear of the " grappin " made the use of any but the most aged female model impossible. It is plain, therefore, that the study of reality was not essential to him, and the apparent inconsistency in his views is to some extent explained by the fact that for him to paint from Nature meant no more than to realize the sensations created by con- templating Nature, and that his aim was most distinctly not to realize these sensations by imitation. What exactly his intention was it is probably impossible to say. There is no trace in M. Vollard's record of his sayings of any policy of wilful distortion, of any attempt to design in planes, or of any other of the hundred-and-one fantastic intentions with which his latter-day admirers credit him. Was he really incapable of realization, really " un rate "—a man of ideas lacking the technical equipment necessary to their articulate expression ?
It is impossible, if one looks through the specimens of his art given in M. Vollard's book, to accept such a view. Accom- plished in the ordinary sense of the term Cezanne perhaps was not. His drawing, judged by ordinary standards, seems weak and clumsy, but ordinary standards are all based on the work . of those who have striven after exact representation. Even in his student days Cezanne does not appear to have followed this ideal. Whether in painting his own country, which he so passionately adored, or the human figure, which he considered the crown of all art, or those still-life arrangements which most people find the easiest to understand of all his work, be would seem always to have aimed quite uncon- sciously, no doubt, at the fusion of the material ,objects concerned into the most perfect unity and equilibrium of which his vision was capable. If one could find what one may call his emotional formula, it would consist of an intense susceptibility to the influence of colour and an intense appreciation of harmony and balance. Every scene which he made the subject of contemplation swung itself straight- way into a rhythmical relation, which not only permeated but annihilated the details of material form, and it was this aesthetic revelation which he set himself to realize. If he was almost always conscious of failure, that is the fate of every artist who has anything above the common range of perception to express, nor does it follow that a more technically gifted artist would have realized his intention more successfully. The rhythm and design which one can find in almost all his work one finds, and he found also, in the great Italian and French painters ; but to them design was an incident ; to him something which, for lack of a better name, one may call design would seem to have been the essence of creation. Whether he or his forerunners were right it is impossible to say, but it is certain at least that he brought back to the art of painting a quality which it was in danger of forgetting, and it may even be, as many believe, that he has opened to that art a new and unlimited field of achievement.
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