CHAPTER VIII
THE CASE OF PAUL CÉZANNE
The case of painter Paul Cézanne. Is he a stupendous nobody or a surpassing genius? The critical doctors disagree, an excellent omen for the reputation of the man from Provence. We do not discuss a corpse, and though Cézanne died in 1906 he is still a living issue among artists and writers. Every exhibition calls forth comment: fair, unfair, ignorant, and seldom just. Yet the Cézanne question, is it so difficult to resolve? Like Brahms, the Frenchman is often misrepresented; Brahms, known now as a Romantic writing within the walls of accepted forms, neither a pedant nor a revolutionist; Cézanne, not a revolutionist, not an innovator, vastly interested in certain problems, has been made "chef d'école" and fathered with a lot of theories which would send him into one of his famous rages if he could hear them. Either a revolutionist or a plagiarist! cried Paul Gauguin—whose work was heartily detested by Cézanne; but truth is ever mediocre, whether it resides at the bottom of a well or swings on the cusps of the new moon. What is the truth about Cézanne? The question bobs up every season. His so-called followers raise a clamour over the banality of "representation" in art, and their master is the one man in the history of art who squandered on canvas startling evocations of actuality, whose nose was closest to the soil. Huysmans was called an "eye" by Remy de Gourmont. Paul Cézanne is also an eye.
In 1901 I saw at the Champs de Mars Salon a picture by Maurice Denis entitled Hommage à Cézanne, the idea of which was manifestly inspired by Manet's Hommage à Fantin-Latour. The canvas depicted a still life by Cézanne on a chevalet and surrounded by Bonnard, Denis, Redon, Roussel, Serusier, Vuillard, Mellerio, and Vollard. Himself (as they say in Irish) is shown standing and apparently unhappy, embarrassed. Then came the brusque apotheosis of 1904 at the Autumn Salon, the most revelatory of his unique gift thus far made. Puvis de Chavannes had a special Salle, so had Eugène Carrière; Cézanne held the place of honour. The critical press was hostile or half-hearted. Poor Cézanne, with his naïve vanity, seemed dazzled by the uproarious championship of "les jeunes," and, to give him credit for a peasant-like astuteness, he was rather suspicious and always on his guard. He stolidly accepted the frantic homage of the youngsters, looking all the while like a bourgeois Buddha. In The Sun of 1901, 1904, and 1906 (the latter the year of his death) appeared my articles on Cézanne, among the first, if not the first, that were printed in this country. Since then he has been hoisted to the stars by his admirers, and with him have mounted his prices. Why not? When juxtaposed with most painters his pictures make the others look like linoleum or papier-mâché.
He did not occupy himself, as did Manet, with the manners, ideas, and aspects of his generation. In the classic retort of Manet he could have replied to those who taunted him with not "finishing" his pictures: "Sir, I am not a historical painter." Nor need we be disconcerted, in any estimate of him, by the depressing snobbery of collectors who don't know B from a bull's foot, but who go off at half-trigger when a hint is dropped about the possibilities of a painter appreciating in a pecuniary sense. Cézanne is the painting idol of the hour, as were Manet and Monet a decade ago. These fluctuations must not distract us, because Cabanel, Bouguereau and Henner, too, were idolised once upon a time, and served to make a millionaire's holiday by hanging in his marble bathroom. It is the undeniable truth that Cézanne has become a tower of strength in the eyes of the younger generation of artists which intrigues critical fancy. Sincerity is strength; Cézanne is sincere to the core; but even stark sincerity does not necessarily imply the putting forth of masterpieces. Before he attained his original, synthetic power he patiently studied Delacroix, Courbet, and several others. He achieved at times the foundational structure of Courbet, but his pictures, so say his enemies, are sans composition, sans linear pattern, sans personal charm. But "Popularity is for dolls," cried Emerson.
Cézanne's was a twilight soul. And a humourless one. His early modelling in paint was quasi-structural. Always the architectural sense, though his rhythms are elliptical at times and he betrays a predilection for the asymmetrical. Nevertheless, a man who has given to an art in two dimensions the illusion of a third; tactile values are here raised to the nth degree. His colour is personal and rhythmic. Huysmans was clairvoyant when, nearly a half-century ago, he spoke of Cézanne's work as containing the prodromes of a new art. He was absorbed in the handling of his material, not in the lyric, dramatic, anecdotic, or rhetorical elements. His portraits are vital and charged with character. And he often thinks profoundly on unimportant matters.
When you are young your foreground is huddled: it is the desire for more space that begets revolutionists; not unlike a big man elbowing his way in a crowd. Laudable then are all these sporadic outbursts; and while a creative talent may remain provincial, even parochial, as was the case with Cézanne, a critic must be cosmopolitan or nothing. An artist may stay rooted in his own bailiwick his life long, yet paint like an angel; but a provincial critic is a contradiction in terms. He reminds one of a razor so dull that it can't cut butter. Let us therefore be hospitable to new ideas; even Cabanel has his good points.
The tang of the town is not in Cézanne's portraits of places. His leaden landscapes do not arouse to spontaneous activity a jaded retina fed on Fortuny, Monticelli, or Monet. As for the groups of bathing women, how they must wound the sensibility of George Moore, Professor of Energy at the University of Erotica. There is no sex appeal. Merely women in their natural pelt. It is related of the Empress Eugénie that in front of Courbet's Les Baigneuses (Salon, 1853) she asked: "Est-ce aussi une percheronne?" Of the heavy-flanked Percheron breed of horse are the ladies on the canvases of Cézanne. The remark of the Empress appealed to the truculent vanity of Courbet. It might not have pleased Cézanne. With beauty, academic or operatic, he had no traffic. If you don't care for his graceless nudes you may console yourself that there is no disputing tastes—with the tasteless. They are uglier than the females of Degas, and twice as truthful.
We have seen some of his still-life pieces so acid in tonal quality as to suggest that divine dissonance produced on the palate by a slightly stale oyster, or akin to the rancid note of an oboe in a score by Stravinski. But what thrice-subtle sonorities, what colour chords are in his best work. I once wrote in the Promenades of an Impressionist that his fruits and vegetables savour of the earth. Chardin interprets still-life with realistic beauty; when he painted an onion it revealed a certain grace. Vollon would have dramatised it. When Cézanne painted one you smelt it. A feeble witticism, to be sure, but it registered the reaction on the sounding-board of my sensibility.