Paul Cézanne — 3 Pissarro, Landscape and Impressionism

1. 1. Cézanne's collaboration with Pissarro in the 1870s marked a shift from his earlier 'cuillarde' style to a more patient, nature-focused approach, but his evolution was neither uniform nor linear.
2. 2. As early as 1866, Cézanne declared his intention to paint only outdoors, believing studio work could never match the truth and originality of nature.
3. 3. The Franco-Prussian War and the Commune dispersed Cézanne's circle and forced him into hiding, leading him to adopt a more direct method of working from nature in L'Estaque.
4. 4. After the war, Paris was scarred and politically repressive under the Third Republic, contrary to Zola's optimistic prediction of a new reign.
5. 5. In the early Third Republic, landscape painting fell into official disfavor as conservative critics attacked it for contributing to the decline of classical painting and historical subject matter.
6. 6. Pissarro and Cézanne's friendship was forged by shared outsider status, similar literary tastes, and a belief in art's opposition to metropolitan bourgeois life.
7. 7. For Pissarro, nature had moral value and was opposed to the atomization and rootlessness of city life; he aimed to achieve 'centred subjectivity' through rural landscape painting.
8. 8. Pissarro's influence led Cézanne to adopt a slower, more workmanlike approach, lighten his palette, and use color modulation instead of line and chiaroscuro.
9. 9. Cézanne's copy of Pissarro's 'Louveciennes' reveals his struggle to reconcile Pissarro's interplay of light and material structure, resulting in a denser, more monumental but equivocal painting.
10. 10. By the late 1870s, Cézanne developed a 'constructive stroke' style to bring greater order and unity, reclaiming Pissarro's earlier experimentation with pictorial unity in drawings.
11. 11. Cézanne's friendship with Zola deteriorated as Zola became disenchanted with Impressionism and their social circles diverged; 'Le Château de Médan' reflects their alienation.
12. 12. Cézanne's late style emerged from his dialogue with Pissarro, amplifying equivocation and ambiguity within Impressionism to create an art organized around uncertainty and paradox.