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    Cézanne: A Study of His Development
    Cézanne: A Study of His Development
    Cézanne: A Study of His Development
    Ebook153 pages1 hour

    Cézanne: A Study of His Development

    By Roger Fry

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    The late Roger Fry was an art critic of unequalled perception and influence. One of his missions was to work for a better understanding of the Impressionist school and, above all, to claim for Cézanne (1839-1906) the great place that was rightfully his. In CÉZANNE Fry wrote a critical analysis which in many aspects has never been surpassed. He achieved with conspicuous success a two-fold aim: to show the essential development of the painter’s genius and to approach his work as it really is; as Fry himself words it, to detect the profound difference between Cézanne’s message and what we have made of it.”

    The result is a book, couched in Fry’s most lucid, penetrating manner, which is of great technical value to the painter and student, and which offers to the layman an illuminating demonstration of the essential nature of Cézanne’s art.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMuriwai Books
    Release dateDec 2, 2018
    ISBN9781789127294
    Cézanne: A Study of His Development
    Author

    Roger Fry

    Roger Eliot Fry (1866-1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism. He was the first figure to raise public awareness of modern art in Britain, and emphasised the formal properties of paintings over the “associated ideas” conjured in the viewer by their representational content. Born on December 14, 1866 in London, Fry was educated at Clifton College and King’s College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the Conversazione Society, alongside freethinking men who would shape the foundation of his interest in the arts. After taking a first in the Natural Science tripos, he went to Paris and then Italy to study art, eventually specialising in landscape painting. In 1896, Fry was introduced to the Bloomsbury Group. In the 1900s, Fry started to teach art history at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. In 1903 Fry was involved in the foundation of The Burlington Magazine, the first scholarly periodical dedicated to art history in Britain. He wrote for The Burlington, and was its co-editor (1909-1919), from 1903 until his death, publishing over two hundred pieces on eclectic subjects, from children’s drawings to bushman art. In 1906, Fry was appointed Curator of Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This was also the year in which he “discovered” the art of Paul Cézanne, the year the artist died. In November 1910, Fry organised the exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists (a term which he coined) at the Grafton Galleries, London, followed in 1912 with the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1912. In 1913 he founded the Omega Workshops, a design workshop based in London’s Fitzroy Square. In 1933, he was appointed the Slade Professor at Cambridge.

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      Book preview

      Cézanne - Roger Fry

      This edition is published by Papamoa Press – www.pp-publishing.com

      To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – papamoapress@gmail.com

      Or on Facebook

      Text originally published in 1927 under the same title.

      © Papamoa Press 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

      Publisher’s Note

      Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

      We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

      CÉZANNE

      A STUDY OF HIS DEVELOPMENT

      BY

      ROGER FRY

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Contents

      TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

      PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 4

      TABLE OF MORE IMPORTANT DATES IN CEZANNE’S LIFE 5

      LIST OF PLATES 6

      CÉZANNE 8

      PLATES 63

      REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 103

      PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

      About three years ago M. Waldemar George, then editor of l’Amour de l’Art, desiring to bring out in his journal a complete series of reproductions of the Cézannes in M. Pellerin’s collection, asked me to write the accompanying text. Difficulties arose which prevented the scheme from being carried out fully and we were obliged to be content with a selection. In this reduced form my essay and such illustrations as could be procured constituted last December’s number of "l’Amour de l’Art. This essay is the basis of the present work, but it has been considerably enlarged. M. Pellerin’s collection is so much the most representative of all the various phases of Cézanne’s art in existence, that a study of it is essential to understanding his development. It does not, therefore, interfere with the general bearing of the present essay that the majority of examples chosen are drawn thence.

      My thanks are due to the Editor of l’Amour de l’Art for permitting the use of the blocks used in that journal, to M. Simon Lévy for valuable advice, and to Dr. Heyligers for allowing me to consult his collection of photographs of Cezanne’s works.

      ROGER FRY

      August, 1927

      TABLE OF MORE IMPORTANT DATES IN CEZANNE’S LIFE

      1839.—Born at Aix-en-Provence.

      1861.—First visit to Paris and return to Aix.

      1862.—Settled in Paris to study painting.

      1863.—Portraits of his father and Achille l’Empéraire (Figs. 4 and 5).

      1869-1870.—At Aix and L’Estaque.

      1872-1873.—At Auvers with Pissarro.

      1877.—Le Compotier (Fig. 16). Les Baigneurs (Fig. 24). Portrait of M. Choquet. Exhibits with the Impressionists.

      1888.—Portrait of Mme. Cézanne in red dress (Fig. 34).

      1891-1892.—The Cardplayers (Figs. 36 and 37).

      1895.—Portrait of M. Geffroy (Fig. 35). Exhibition of his works at M. Vollard’s.

      1904.—Portrait of Vallier (Fig 44). Retrospective Exhibition of his works at the Salon d’Automne.

      1906.—Died at Aix.

      LIST OF PLATES

      PLATE

      I. Raising of Lazarus. Pellerin Collection.

      II. The Autopsy. Pellerin Collection.

      III. The Pasha. Pellerin Collection.

      IV. Portrait of the Artist’s Father. Pellerin Collection.

      IV. Portrait of Achille l’Empéraire. Pellerin Collection.

      I. Head of Bearded Man (self-portrait). Pellerin Collection.

      V. An Advocate. Pellerin Collection.

      VI. Portrait of the Artist.

      VII. Les Quais. Pellerin Collection.

      VII. Pastoral. Pellerin Collection.

      VIII. A Picnic. Pellerin Collection.

      IX. Two Men Playing Cards. Pellerin Collection.

      XXXVII. Sketch of Two Men. Pellerin Collection.

      VIII. L’Après-midi à Naples.

      X. Auvers. Pellerin Collection.

      XI. Le Compotier. Pellerin Collection.

      XII. Still-life with Ginger Jar. Pellerin Collection.

      XIII. Still-life, Soup Tureen and Bottle. Pellerin Collection.

      XIII. Still-life, Cineraria. Pellerin Collection.

      V. Portrait of M. Choquet.

      XIV. Portrait of Mme. Cézanne.

      XV. The Mas.

      XVI. Gardanne.

      XVII. The Bathers.

      XVIII. Provençal Landscape.

      X. Maisons au bord de la Marne. Pellerin Collection.

      XII. Winter Landscape. Pellerin Collection.

      XIX. Rocky Landscape. Tate Gallery.

      XX. Study for the Bathers (Fig. 24), pen.

      XX. Pencil Drawing. Heyligers Collection.

      XXI. Mt. Ste. Victoire Water-colour.

      XXII. Pencil and Wash Drawing.

      XXIV. Femme à la Cafetière. Pellerin Collection.

      XXIII. Portrait of Mme. Cézanne. Pellerin Collection.

      XXV. Portrait of M. Geffroy. Pellerin Collection.

      XXVI. The Cardplayers.

      XXVII. The Cardplayers. Courtauld Institute

      XXVIII. Landscape.

      XXIX. Mt. Ste. Victoire.

      XXX. La Route du Château Noir. Pellerin Collection.

      XXXI. Mt. Ste. Victoire Water-colour.

      XXXIII. Landscape, Houses on a Wooded Slope. Collection.

      XXXII. The Pool.

      XXIII. Portrait of Vallier. Pellerin Collection.

      XXXIV. Large Composition with Nude Figures. Collection.

      XXXV. Nude Figures in Landscape. Pellerin Collection.

      XXXVI. Portrait of the Artist. Tate Gallery.

      XXXVI. Academy. Pellerin Collection.

      XXX. La Femme. Pellerin Collection.

      XXXVII. The Toilet. Pellerin Collection.

      XXXVIII. Nude Figures. Pellerin Collection.

      XXXIX. Temptation of St. Anthony. Pellerin Collection.

      XXXIII. The Toilet. Pellerin Collection.

      XL. Sancho Panza. Pellerin Collection.

      CÉZANNE

      "L’art est une harmonie parallèle à la nature."

      Paul Cézanne, quoted by M. Joachim Gasquet.

      §I. Those artists among us whose formation took place before the war recognize Cézanne as their tribal deity, and their totem. In their communions they absorb his essence and nourish therewith their spiritual being—at least they would do this—did they, like primitive man, know the efficient magic ritual. We believe in any case that in our art we incorporate something of his essential quality. Yet when, before one of his works we try to press into closer contact with his spirit there is a risk that the needs of our own personal expression may so far have distorted our conception of his nature, that we see not so much his expression as the distorted image of it which has gradually taken its place in our own minds. For Cézanne has not come to us directly; we have almost all of us approached him through some mediatory and more easily accessible personality such as Van Gogh’s.

      If we only knew something about the rhythm of man’s spiritual life we might understand why every great spiritual discovery—and almost in proportion to its greatness—has to undergo this deforming process; why gods lose something of their real character in the process of divination; why Jesus implies St. Paul; why St. Francis must have his brother Elias; why Cézanne already before his death saw Gauguin parading his sensation before the public. And what would Cézanne have said of his spiritual progeny today, before a Picasso, a Dufy, a Vlaminck or a Friesz? This question forced itself on me with greater insistence when at the invitation of l’Amour de l’Art I agreed to make a detailed study of the largest and most representative collection of Cézanne’s works in existence. Because what surprised me most—when once I had, so to speak, depolarized his works, when I had removed the scales of vague and distorted memories; when, at last, I seemed to be face to face with the artist himself—what surprised me was the profound difference between Cézanne’s message and what we have made of it. I had to admit to myself how much nearer Cézanne was to Poussin than to the Salon d’Automne.

      Every year the effectiveness of our art becomes more apparent. To describe a masterpiece of the Salon d’Automne or of some equivalent English exhibition one would have to use positive terms; to describe Cézanne’s works, I find myself, like a mediæval mystic before the divine reality, reduced to negative terms. I have to say first what it is not. Cézanne is not decorative like so many of our most gifted contemporaries; he is not what artists call strong—and goodness knows what strength some of us display; he has not the gift to seize hold directly of an idea and express it with an emphasis which renders it immediately apparent; he seems indeed hardly to arrive at the comprehension of his theme till the very end of the work; there is always something still lurking behind the expression, something he would grasp if he could. In short he is riot perfect, and of many modern works one might predicate perfection. Many modern painters have intense assurance; no one was less assured than Cézanne. He often feels his way so cautiously that we should call him timid were it not that his tentatives prove his desperate courage in face of the elusive theme.

      If I try to use positive terms they still are of the nature of limitations. Cézanne is so discreet, so little inclined to risk a definite statement for fear of being arrogant; he is so immensely humble; he never dares trust to his acquired knowledge; the conviction behind each brush stroke has to be won from nature at every step, and he will do nothing except at the dictation of a conviction which arises within him as the result

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