Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne was born on 19 January 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, south of France. He was the eldest of three children, Louis-Auguste Cézanne and Anne-Elisabeth-Honorine Aubert. After his father worked in hat manufacturing, he founded his own bank in 1848 and soon became one of the wealthiest citizens of Aix-en Provence. At the age of thirteen, Cézanne went to Collège Bourbon, Aix-en Provence's best-educated school, as a boarding student. Cézanne would later become one of the greatest French writers of the time and established a deep friendship with Émile Zola, one year younger than him. In 1857 he began attending Aix School of Painting and copied plaster models under the supervision of his teacher, Gilbert; worked with live models. Cézanne won the second prize with an oil painting in the painting contest organized by Aix painting school.

Cézanne began to think seriously about being a painter. But he couldn't convince his father. At the request of his father who wanted him to have a reputable profession, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law in Aix-en-Provence in 1858, where he was going to study for three years. In 1859, his father bought the 18th-century Jas de Bouffan summerhouse to the west of Aix-en Provence. It was Jas de Bouffan's summer house, where Cézanne spent the most important years of his life and gave his first works. During the restoration of Jas de Bouffan, which was generally not in good condition, he was allowed to paint the walls of one of the rooms in Cézanne. During the restoration of Jas de Bouffan, Cézanne drew the four-season allegory, a traditional theme for panels placed on four semi-circular niches in the hall. These paintings were Cézanne's first known works.

After Zola had graduated from school, he had gone to Paris and in his letters, he had invited Cézanne to Paris. Cézanne, who didn't want to be a lawyer, dreamed of going to his friend in Paris and becoming an artist. He finally got his father's approval and went to Paris in 1861 to study art with his friend Zola's encouragement. He worked regularly with live models for his paintings at the Suisse Academy in Paris. Soon after, he returned to Aix-en-Provence, thinking that his work was not progressing. He started working at his father's bank where he couldn't stay long. Cézanne decided to become an artist with the intense support of his father and went back to Paris in 1862.

Cézanne also worked at the Suisse Academy on a regular basis. had encounter again Camille Pissarro, a pre-impressionist, whom he had first met at the Suisse Academy, who would teach him to work outdoors. Like Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Edouard Manet, he soon met artists known as Impressionists. Cézanne was sympathetic to the French romantic painter Eugène Delacroix, who was a great inspiration among the artists of his time. He had made many copies of his paintings. It was clear that Cézanne's paintings were influenced by Delacroix, whose colors were dominated by Mor, Veronese green and Prussian blue. In addition to copies of Delacroix, Cézanne produced imaginary and violent paintings.

These dark paintings he made in his early years in Paris constituted a separate category. These subjects, generally based on literature, mythology or sacred books, were conveyed to the canvas with a very individual and striking style. These works of sexuality, seduction, kidnapping, and murder were dominated by aggression and brutality. At the end of the 1860s, after the depictions of this brute force, he made a series of manned landscapes.

In 1869, Cézanne met Hortense Fiquet, who was eleven years younger in Paris. During the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, he and Hortense traveled to Estaque, a small fishing village near Marseille, south of France. He stayed there until the war was over. In the Estaque, open-air and rural areas were the subject of his paintings. Cézanne did not differ much from his early works in terms of color use and expressionist brushstrokes during this period but was based on close observation of nature. He became a sharp turning point in Cézanne's artistic development. During the next few years, the most important issue of the paintings was the landscape. This choice has never changed until the end of his life.

In 1871, he returned to Paris. Shortly after, Hortense also arrived. The following year Cézanne and Hortense's sons, Paul, were born. In 1872, he and his family went to Pontoise, northwest of Paris. He worked with Pissarro, who lived here. Pisarro encouraged the artist to work outdoors. Pisarro laid the foundations for this method of work, which Cézanne would continue for the rest of his career. Impressed by Pissarro, Cézanne began to receive subjects directly from nature for his paintings in a few months. The use of brighter colors learned by Pissarro, regular brush strokes and close observation of nature gave Cézanne's art a new direction. With the influence of Pissarro, Cézanne began to use brighter colors. In addition to the extremely expressive subjects of the first semester, he also abandoned the painting techniques and dark colors.

In 1872, Cézanne moved with his family to Auvers-Sur-Oise, near Pontoise. His first serious patron, Vincent van Gogh's doctor and friend, Dr. Paul Gachet, was the first person to get the painting of Cézanne's work. This art-loving doctor in a short time admired Cézanne's work. Cézanne lived at the doctor's house in Auvers-Sur-Oise until the spring of 1874 upon the invitation of Doctor Gachet. That same year, Cézanne participated in the exhibition "first impressionists" in the Paris studio of photographer Gaspard Félix Nadar. Cézanne's painting "A Modern Olympia" inspired by the painting "Olympia" by Édouard Manet and the painting "The Hanged Man's House in Auvers" were featured in this exhibition.

Cézanne later went navigate between the cities of Aix-en-Province, Estaque, and Paris. In this period, he spent his time in the countryside and tried to develop the landscape technique by making outdoor pictures. He was in Aix-en-Province in general and started his first series of paintings with the theme of ’Mount Saint-Victoire, a long strip in the Aix area, from the early 1880s to the end of his life. Cézanne's sister Rose and her husband Maxime Conil were seated at the Bellevue farm in southwestern Aix-en-Provence. Cézanne made tables with variations on the appearance of the Sainte-Victoire Mountain from this farm.

1886 was an important turning point in Cézanne's life. Zola has published the novel "L'Oeuvre"(Work). In his novel Zola described a failed painter named Claude Lantier. The writer created the character in his novel inspired by Cézanne. This situation opened the way between the two childhood friends in a way, not recovered. In the same year, Cézanne's father lost his life and left a great fortune. Now he was able to live without the money shortage. Cézanne married Hortense Fiquet in Aix-en-Provence. He continued to live in his family home in Jas de Bouffan until he finished his new studio.

He chose a simple life by drawing the surrounding countryside and nearby areas. The painter painted a large number of self-portraits and portraits of his wife Hortense. In his portraits, Cézanne used the workers as well at Jas de Bouffan as models. Other than the landscape and portrait paintings that Cézanne worked on, the other great painting type was "still life". Cézanne often used the method of depicting the same object from two different angles in his "still life". He did a lot of painting on "Apple still life". "Apple still life" 's were a means of investigating the depiction of volume on a flat surface, apart from traditional perspective techniques.

In 1890 the painter went on a five-month trip to Switzerland. This was Cézanne's only overseas trip. In 1895, he opened his first solo exhibition in the gallery of art collector Ambroise Vollard in Paris. He was not widely accepted during his lifetime, and his first supporters were mostly other artists. After this exhibition, his works were evaluated in a different way. Many art-lovers had the opportunity to know the works of Cézanne, who chose to work in a secluded place in Aix-en-Provence, instead of living in the center of the art world in Paris. Critics understood the value of the painter only in the last decade of his life.

In 1897, he lost his mother. The house that Cézanne spent nearly all his life working in Jas de Bouffan was sold in 1899. Hortense was usually in Paris with his son Paul. After living with her husband and son in Paris, he moved to an apartment in Boulegnon Street in the center of Aix-en-Provence, in an with a small studio. He hired an assistant named Madam Bremond. In addition, he kept small sheds and rooms in the countryside to store his materials close to the subjects he was going to work on.

In 1901 Cezanne finally bought a plot in the north of Aix-en-Provence, on the hill of undeveloped Lauves. He built a house with a high and well-lit studio. He started working here in 1902. For the first time, he had the opportunity to work in a large studio. Still, he was staying at his house. Cézanne was taking Lauves early in the morning. After returning to town at noon, he was going back to his studio in Lauves. Cézanne limited his work in his new studio to Lauves to a number of themes that later became his best-known work. These were the "Sainte-Victoire Mountain" sights and the "The Bathers" group. In the 1880s he painted the Sainte-Victoire Mountain several times. This theme became one of the main themes of Cézanne's last period. In the "late period" paintings, which he reworked, the mountain became the main element of the painting. Cézanne, "The Bathers" topic, oil painting, watercolor, pattern, and lithograph was handled.

Cézanne spent the last seven years of his life working on three large paintings about women bathing. Apart from a version of "The Card Players" these were the largest-sized images he had ever made, and even the choice of the size indicated that Cézanne put great emphasis on these paintings. He also started to portrait outdoors. In the last years of his life, he often worked on the series of portraits of his gardener Vallier. Portraits in 1906 were the works of Cézanne's portrait painting. The portraits of Cézanne in 1906 were shown as the culmination of the "portrait painter".

Cézanne, who had pneumonia in 1906, died on 22 October in Aix-en-Provence. Two retrospective exhibitions, one year after his death, gave him the opportunity to follow his development in a comprehensive manner for the first time. In the early years of the 20th century, Cézanne's new understanding of space and its opposition to traditional rules of perspective rules became a brand-new point of departure for painting. His contributions and influence to modern art would give him the role of the "father of modern art".

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