Paul Cezanne's Vase: Still Life with Fruit Basket (1886)

Main works

The Holy Mountain Sainte-Victoire, Still Life with Apples and Oranges, View from L'Estaque

Artistic movements

Impressionism

Inspiration, influence

Delacroix, Courbet, Manet (Romantic period, which he himself described as "bold") and then very influenced by his contemporary and friend, Pissarro.

His contemporaries

What distinguishes Cézanne: he is the most difficult of the Impressionists to approach... Even Dali, who described him as the worst French painter ever to have existed... His generation (the Impressionists) recognized and acclaimed him when critics and the public ignored him. Perhaps he was the most modern of the Impressionists, perhaps also the most uncompromising!

To keep in mind

He wanted (and sought throughout his life) to absolve himself of drawing (and of chiaroscuro) while maintaining volume, solely through the power of colors (and their modulation in light). That was his challenge!

To go further

Obsessed with the representation of nature, Paul Cézanne did not want to please the eye of the viewer, but only to make real the transition from one plane to another, from one tone to another, always without using drawing (black line) to achieve this. It is for this reason that his influence on the Cubists is significant.