11 Things You Didn’t Know About Paul Cezanne

Knowledge can be gained at any age. After having a detailed study on topics there are things unknown to us. So, we at Abirpothi present before you the lesser-known facts about artists around the world.

Paul Cezanne

Shut your eyes, wait, and think of nothing. Now, open them … one sees nothing but a great coloured undulation. What then? An irradiation and glory of colour. This is what a picture should give us … an abyss in which the eye is lost, a secret germination, a coloured state of grace … loose consciousness. Descend with the painter into the dim tangled roots of things, and rise again from them in colours, be steeped in the light of them.

Paul Cezanne

Paul Cezanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cezanne was known for his innovative use of colour and his ability to capture the essence of his subjects in his paintings. He was particularly interested in the relationship between colour and form and how they could be used to create a sense of depth and perspective in a painting. Cezanne\’s work was initially rejected by the art establishment in France and he struggled to gain recognition during his lifetime. However, his work was highly influential and helped pave the way for the development of 20th-century art movements such as Fauvism and Cubism.

Paul Cezanne was born in Aix-en-Provence, France, in 1839. He was the oldest of five children, and his father was a successful banker and diplomat. Despite his father\’s wishes, Cézanne decided to pursue a career in art and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Cezanne\’s early work was heavily influenced by Impressionism, but he later developed his own style, which came to be known as Post-Impressionism. His paintings are characterized by their use of geometric shapes and bold, saturated colours. In addition to his work as a painter, Cezanne was also an avid reader and enjoyed spending time in nature. He loved hiking and climbing in the mountains of Provence, and he was an avid collector of books, paintings, and prints. Cezanne died in 1906 at the age of 67. His paintings are now considered masterpieces and are exhibited in major museums and galleries around the world.

11 lesser-known facts about Paul Cezanne

1. Paul Cezanne had a complicated relationship with his father, who opposed his artistic pursuits and wanted him to become a lawyer.
2. Cezanne had an affair with a married woman named Marie-Hortense Fiquet, and kept her as his mistress until his death in 1906.

   

3. He was an avid collector of Japanese prints and an admirer of Japanese art and culture.
4. Cezanne was a reclusive artist, often shunning the company of other painters and avoiding the Parisian art scene.
5. Cezanne was a perfectionist and was known to sometimes destroy his own canvases when he was dissatisfied with the result.

   

6. He was an avid traveller and made trips to different parts of Europe, including Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium.
7. Cezanne was an avid reader, and his favourite authors included Dante, Montaigne and Shakespeare.
8. He was a heavy smoker, an alcoholic and suffered from depression.

   

9. He was born out of wedlock, a rare occurrence at the time, his parents were not married at his birth.
10. In a letter dated April 15, 1904, Cézanne advises Emile Bernard to \”treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, all put in perspective, that is, that each side of an object in a plane is directed towards a central point.\”

    

11. A work that is known as The Card Players from 1893 was sold for anywhere between $250 million (nearly $290 million today) and $300 million (nearly $350 million today) back in 2011. It was bought by the Royal Family of Qatar and was the highest price ever paid for a painting at that time.