CÉZANNE
Still Life
One’s first impression from even half-tone reproductions of his paintings is a feeling of construction. I have before me a still-life—the fruit, the bowl, the piece of stuff are not simply painted but built up as firmly and scientifically as a builder builds a house—the materiality as well as the beauty is there.
It is just the same with his portraits, his figure pieces and his landscapes; one cannot escape the sense of the substance, the fundamental reality.
And to attain it all he used the simplest and most direct technic, not a brush-stroke, not a line, not a spot of color wasted.
It was these characteristics which made him a profound Impressionist, in the wider significance of the term, but also the first of the Fauves, the father of the revolt from Impressionism in its more superficial significance.
With the name of Cézanne are associated the names of two men whose work shows his influence, VanGogh and Gauguin, and one whose work is wholly different, Henri Rousseau, the custom house employee who painted without instruction; later, but also conspicuously, Henri Matisse.