Art: Summer 1

Week beginning 11th May 2020

Aquamarine 1, 2, and 3

Topic: link Mountains

Artist: Paul Cézanne 1839 –1906

Learning Focus Explore the 19th Century paintings and life of Cézanne

Art appreciation of Cézanne’s Mont Sainte– Victoire series

Create own mountainscape showing the influence of Cézanne

Useful websites:

For an insight into Paul Cezanne’s life and also to view lots of his paintings.

https://artuk.org/discover/artists/cezanne-paul-18391906

“Cézanne was my one and only master... He was like the father of us all.” Pablo Picasso

Paul Cézanne was a French Post-Impressionist painter, whose works influenced the de-velopment of many 20th-century art movements, especially Cubism.

As a young man Cézanne moved to Paris and he became part of the Impressionist school along with painters such as: Pissarro, Monet, Renoir and Degas. Although he used the techniques of these young artists, he was already composing using cubes and lines; his strokes, unlike those of the Impressionists, were not strewn with colour, but they rep-resented the actual colours he could see.

On leaving Paris, during his thirties and forties Cézanne developed his mature style, these paintings have what was then the radically new quality of simultaneously repre-senting deep space and flat design. In his own words, “I seek to render perspective only through colour.”

Like many artists he was not popular with the public during most of his life, however, he did not give up. In his forties he moved back to his father’s beautiful home in Aix- en -Provence and continued paint-ing from there

Finally, in the last ten years of his life Cézanne achieved fame and recognition, he laid the foundation for Picasso and other artists’ who experimented with Cubism, while his investigations of colour and brushstroke influenced Matisse and other artists.

Cézanne’s “Self-Portrait with Bowler Hat,” from 1885-86

The Life of Paul Cézanne

We are going to have a closer look at a series of paintings Cézanne produced on the subject of Mont Sainte-Victoire, this is a mountain in France which overlooks Aix-en-Provence (the town where Cézanne was born). Cézanne painted it on numerous occasions during his career. The series not only provides an interesting take on landscape painting, but it also documents Cézanne's development as an artist during his lifetime. The series was painted between 1882 and 1906 and features various perspectives of Mont Sainte-Victoire. It is considered part of Post-Impressionism.

Questions to consider

As you look at the paintings over the next few pages what do you think of them?

Consider:

Colour—Cézanne painted this series over many years, the colours he used changed with the different conditions.

In which paintings does he use rich colours and in which paintings are they duller?

How does his choice of colour effect the mood of the painting? (Is it dramatic, calm, menacing etc.)

In which paintings is the mountain imposing and in which does it blend in with the landscape or the sky?

In which paintings do you think the mountain looks most realistic? Does this change over time?

How do you think Cézanne viewed the mountain? Did this change over time?

Mont Sainte-Victoire

A photo of the real Mont Sainte-Victoire

‘The Montagne Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine Tree’ 1882

Montagne Sainte-Victoire, 1890

Mont Sainte-Victoire and Chateau Noir, 1904-1906

Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1902-1904

Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1902-1904

Mont Sainte-Victoire,

1904-1906

The Plain by Mont Sainte-Victoire, View from Valcros, 1885

Road at the Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1902

Cézanne painted this in 1902. How have the colours changed from the earlier picture?

What about the size of the mountain in the painting? How does this change our view of it? What does it tell us about how Cézanne viewed it?

Now its your turn to get creative. Either using the photo of Mont Sainte-Victoire, or another photo of a mountain (perhaps from the internet or maybe

you have one you have visited) you are going to create your own mountain scape. You will have different resources available at home so please use what you have.

Your Task

If you have paints consider the colours that you are going to use and how you will mix them. Look carefully at Cé-zanne’s colour palette and think about what effect you want to create. Is your painting going to be more realistic or are you going to have a go at his later more dramatic style introducing the idea of blocks of colour and lines?

If you have colour pencils again carefully choose your colours and see if you can re-create the colour blocks.

If you have a grey pencil really think about shading and where the light and shadows fall.

Finally you might want to actually take the blocking of colour one step further and create a mosaic as in these pictures below:

Did you know?

For a time one of Cézanne’s friends and fellow artists lived in Crystal Palace.

He painted a road in Sydenham, which now hangs in the National Gallery.

The Avenue, Sydenham by Camille Pissarro The same road today