Also in a world where the individual is squeezed and moulded and polished by the pressure of his fellow-men the artist remains irreclaimably individual—in a world where every one else is being perpetually educated the artist remains ineducable—where others are shaped he grows. Cézanne realised the type of the artist in its purest most unmitigated form, and M. Vollard has had the wit to write a book about Cézanne and not about Cézanne’s pictures. The time may come when we shall require a complete study of Cézanne’s work, a measured judgment of his achievement and position—it would probably be rash to attempt it as yet. Meanwhile we have M. Vollard’s portrait, at once documented and captivating. Should the book ever become as well known as it deserves there would be, one guesses,
| Cézanne. Portrait of the Artist | Collection Pellerin | |
| Plate XXIII. |
ten people fascinated by Cézanne for one who would walk down the street to see his pictures.
The art historian may sometimes regret that Vasari did not give us more of the æsthetics of his time; but Vasari knew his business, knew, perhaps, that the æsthetics of an age are quickly superseded but that the human document remains of perennial interest to mankind. M. Vollard has played Vasari to Cézanne and done so with the same directness and simplicity, the same narrative ease, the same insatiable delight in the oddities and idiosyncrasies of his subject. And what a model he had to paint! Every word and every gesture he records stick out with the rugged relief of a character in which everything is due to the compulsion of inner forces, in which nothing has been planed down or smoothed away by external pressure—not that external pressure was absent but that the inner compulsion—the inevitable bent of Cézanne’s temperament, was irresistible. In one very important detail Cézanne was spared by life—he always had enough to live on. The thought of a Cézanne having to earn his living is altogether too tragic. But if life spared him in this respect his temperament spared him nothing—for this rough Provençal countryman had so exasperated a sensibility that the smallest detail of daily life, the barking of a dog, the noise of a lift in a neighbouring house, the dread of being touched even by his own son might produce at any moment a nervous explosion. At such times his first relief was in cursing and swearing, but if this failed the chances were that his anger vented itself on his pictures—he would cut one to pieces with his palette knife, or failing that roll it up and throw it into the stove. M. Vollard describes with delightful humour the tortures he endured in the innumerable sittings which he gave Cézanne for his portrait—with what care he avoided any subject of conversation which might lead to misunderstanding. But with all his adroitness there were one or two crises in which the portrait was threatened with the dreaded knife—fortunately Cézanne always found some other work on which to vent his indignation, and the portrait survived, though after a hundred and fifteen sittings, in which Cézanne exacted the immobility of an apple, the portrait was left incomplete. “I am not displeased with the shirt front,” was Cézanne’s characteristic appreciation.
Two phrases continually recur in Cézanne’s conversation which show his curious idiosyncrasies. One the often-quoted one of his dread that any one might “lui jeter le grappin dessus” and the other “moi qui suis faible dans la vie.” They express his constant attitude of distrust of his kind—for him all women were “des veaux et des calculatrices”—his dread of any possible invasion of his personality, and his sense of impotence in face of the forces of life.
None the less, though he pathetically exaggerated his weakness he never seems to have had the least doubt about his supreme greatness as an artist; what troubled and irritated him was his incapacity to express his “sensation” in such terms as would make its meaning evident to the world. It was for this reason that he struggled so obstinately and hopelessly to get into the “Salon de M. Bougereau.” His attitude to conventional art was a strange mixture of admiration at its skill and of an overwhelming horror of its emptiness—of its so “horrible resemblance.”
The fact is that Cézanne had accepted uncritically all the conventions in the pathetic belief that it was the only way of safety for one “so feeble in life.” So he continued to believe in the Catholic Church not from any religious conviction but because “Rome was so strong”—so, too, he believed in the power and importance of the “Salon de Bougereau” which he hated as much as he feared. So, too, with what seems a paradoxical humility he let it be known, when his fame had already been established among the intelligent, that he would be glad to have the Legion of Honour. But here, too, he was destined to fail. The weighty influence and distinguished position of his friends could avail nothing against the undisguised horror with which any official heard the dreaded name of Cézanne. And it appeared that Cézanne was the only artist in France for whom this distinction was inaccessible, even through “influence.” Nothing is stranger in his life than the contrast between the idea the public formed of Cézanne and the reality. He was one of those men destined to give rise to a legend which completely obscured the reality. He was spoken of as the most violent of revolutionaries—Communard and Anarchist were the favourite epithets—and all the time he was a timid little country gentleman of immaculate respectability who subscribed whole-heartedly to any reactionary opinion which could establish his “soundness.” He was a timid man who really believed
| Cézanne. | Gardanne | |
| Plate XXIV. |