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Oil Painting Paul Cézanne 19 Jan 1839 22 Oct 1906 Contact Email dexxxaa@gmail.com
A Report For Other Cezanne Paintings...The information gathered during the investigation suggests that during the mature years of Cézanne’s career, his approach to painting involved a series of variations upon one basic technique. The variations related somewhat to whether he was painting a landscape, a portrait, or a still life, and to the scale of the composition and size of the canvas upon which he was painting. Clearly many other factors, unknown to us, influenced his approach at a given time, as this assortment of paintings reveals. The pigments, too, comprise a fairly consistent base group throughout his career. Some are dropped or used much less frequently during the last decade; others are added with several unusual occurrences.
Very little documentation exists regarding Cézanne’s working technique and even less about the materials which he used. Modern analytical techniques appear, now, to be revealing some information about his method, although it must be stressed that the present report can only be given as a beginning to such an analysis. The pitfalls and complexities of imposing any generalizations upon Cézanne’s work are deservedly famous.
Technique
In 1872-74 Cézanne lived in Auvers-sur-Oise, close enough to Pontoise where Pissarro was so that the two painters could at times collaborate in their painting. The older Pissarro’ s technique was undergoing a change at the time, and Cézanne was much influenced by him to move away from the dark colors and heavy earth tones in the spirit of Courbet which he had been using. Instead, he now began to use lighter, clearer colors, attempting to convey the effects of light and air through color. To this end he abandoned the thick, sculptural applications of paint used in his earlier work and began to apply small patches of paint of a single hue. The color changes from one patch to the adjacent one rendered every nuance of color change observed in the subject matter. Contemporary accounts indicate this method of paint application was a slow and labored process requiring much thought; as one layer was applied richly over another it was often difficult for the artist to recognize a stopping point (4).
By 1877 when Saint-Henri and the Bay of l’Estaque was painted, Cézanne had achieved a controlled evenness of handling of the paint, still with a feeling of solidity (5). This resulted from the patches of parallel strokes, often applied on the diagonal, which laid down each color in turn, brushing the edges of adjacent color patches into one another, wet into wet, thoroughly covering the canvas with paint. One is conscious of the design as a pattern with no clear definition of space. The paint appears to have been rich in medium and to have been applied with a loaded brush which permitted a succession of several parallel strokes of a given color mixture. In contrast, Landscape at Pontoise, painted a few years later, uses a similar application of color with patches of parallel strokes, but in the process defines the complicated recession of planes in space with greater clarity. Here the layers cover the canvas less heavily. The lightening process continues in Bay of l’Estaque, painted somewhere between 1879 and 1883 (6). The layer structure is complicated by the horizontal landscape’s having been painted over a vertical portrait of Madame Cézanne; examination with infrared reflectography instrumentation indicates the portrait was carried out to a fair state of completion. The face tones have been repeated in the water above. The dark blue costume has been worked into the blues and greens of the surrounding landscape and one can readily make out the location of the sitter’s shoulders and arms. Parallel strokes are especially prominent in the foreground where stronger greens and oranges have been applied with low impasto. Distant space is made lighter and airier with intermittent strokes which permit the use of the white priming of the fabric as part of the design. Cross sections show a white priming measuring 32-120 µm in thickness. Above this is the usual single layer of paint, 16-48 µm thick, in samples from two areas of foliage. A third sample of foliage has three paint layers; this includes layers from the background of the portrait below the landscape, creamy yellow, and pale gray.
The lightening of the palette and of the application of paint continues in the 1883 View of the Bay of Marseilles with the Village of Saint-Henri. Here the foreground trees are the only strong dark color. Other colors are somewhat subdued through the mixing of a large proportion of lead white into many hues, and the distant water and mountains are painted in extremely pale tones. Except for the dark greens, all of the paint is applied in more broken tones with space between strokes which serves to lighten the form and enhance the feeling of strong light. In the distance, the regular brushwork of the foreground gives way to irregular strokes which leave great areas of white priming visible to further lighten and to increase the feeling of distance. A cross-section from this dark green of the foreground trees shows a white priming 40 µm thick and a single layer of green with blue particles which measures 16-20 µm in thickness. In these paler distant areas, pencil lines are visible and infrared reflectography shows the very free drawing with which the artist laid out the composition, indicating every building and clump of trees, as well as the distant mountains. Pencil drawing has been discovered in one other Cézanne at the Philadelphia Museum of Art: the 1885-87 Portrait of Madame Cézanne #63-181-6, which has not as yet received a thorough enough examination to be included in this discussion.
Some aspects of the technique used in Flowers in an Olive Jar, c. 1880, are different from the landscapes described earlier. While the background is painted with patches of parallel strokes of varying colors which allow the priming to show in places, the paint of the flowers is applied heavily, with each stroke depicting a petal, and sometimes buildup of several layers in a petal.
The Portrait of Madame Cézanne, 1886-87, has been painted with a lighter, more airy technique overall than seen before among the works examined. Thin paint mixtures have been applied in patches of parallel diagonal strokes in some places, e.g. on the cheek where peach, pink, and rose tones depict form. Elsewhere, for example in the background, the paint has been applied in washes and perhaps rubbed with a cloth to blend adjacent colors into one another. Again the white priming is used as part of the design, here as a highlight tone in the hair.
The landscapes of the last decade use the techniques already noted but each has its own unique characteristics. In Millstone in the Park of the Château Noir, 1898-1900, the familiar parallel strokes on the diagonal and a patch for each different color are used to paint the foliage in the background, but the foreground is handled differently. In the rocks, form is modeled by blending one tone smoothly into another, for example shrimp into peach into light gray into mauve into dark gray, all within a 1″ x 2″ area of rock. Dark lines applied to the uppermost paint surface delineate forms in the foreground and pull them forward while distant space becomes less clear in a screen of colorful brushwork. Two cross sections from an area of orange-yellow foliage in the background show a 24 µm thick white priming and a single 8-12 µm thick golden-brown layer of paint.
The paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire of 1902-04 and 1902-06 show further variations of technique. Individual forms begin to dissolve into abstraction as short, parallel strokes lay out smaller, more sharply distinct patches of color that emphasize the surface plane rather than the depth of space. It appears that a one-quarter inch wide brush may have been used to paint the foreground and a one-half inch wide brush for the distant sky and mountain. Two cross sections from green trees in E36-1-1 have a white priming 8-32 µm in thickness and an unusual succession of layers of paint: bright green, golden yellow, and bright green, each layer averaging about 40 µm in thickness. These indicate more overlapping of paint layers than was seen in the other paintings examined.
The Large Bathers, 1906, is thought to have been what Cézanne was working on when he died and is probably unfinished (7). The familiar technique is used with parallel diagonal strokes about one-inch long, creating patches of color. A one-half inch wide brush seems to have been used and the medium-rich oil paint was applied generously with a buildup of paint at the beginning of each stroke which overlaps the end of the preceding patch of strokes. The unvarnished paint is, at present, matte in appearance in spite of its medium-rich fluidity at the time of application. It appears that forms may have been laid out in black strokes of paint, followed by the application of color, then additional dark strokes painted last to further delineate form.
(https://www.mccrone.com/mm/investigation-materials-technique-paul-cezanne/)
Very little documentation exists regarding Cézanne’s working technique and even less about the materials which he used. Modern analytical techniques appear, now, to be revealing some information about his method, although it must be stressed that the present report can only be given as a beginning to such an analysis. The pitfalls and complexities of imposing any generalizations upon Cézanne’s work are deservedly famous.
Technique
In 1872-74 Cézanne lived in Auvers-sur-Oise, close enough to Pontoise where Pissarro was so that the two painters could at times collaborate in their painting. The older Pissarro’ s technique was undergoing a change at the time, and Cézanne was much influenced by him to move away from the dark colors and heavy earth tones in the spirit of Courbet which he had been using. Instead, he now began to use lighter, clearer colors, attempting to convey the effects of light and air through color. To this end he abandoned the thick, sculptural applications of paint used in his earlier work and began to apply small patches of paint of a single hue. The color changes from one patch to the adjacent one rendered every nuance of color change observed in the subject matter. Contemporary accounts indicate this method of paint application was a slow and labored process requiring much thought; as one layer was applied richly over another it was often difficult for the artist to recognize a stopping point (4).
By 1877 when Saint-Henri and the Bay of l’Estaque was painted, Cézanne had achieved a controlled evenness of handling of the paint, still with a feeling of solidity (5). This resulted from the patches of parallel strokes, often applied on the diagonal, which laid down each color in turn, brushing the edges of adjacent color patches into one another, wet into wet, thoroughly covering the canvas with paint. One is conscious of the design as a pattern with no clear definition of space. The paint appears to have been rich in medium and to have been applied with a loaded brush which permitted a succession of several parallel strokes of a given color mixture. In contrast, Landscape at Pontoise, painted a few years later, uses a similar application of color with patches of parallel strokes, but in the process defines the complicated recession of planes in space with greater clarity. Here the layers cover the canvas less heavily. The lightening process continues in Bay of l’Estaque, painted somewhere between 1879 and 1883 (6). The layer structure is complicated by the horizontal landscape’s having been painted over a vertical portrait of Madame Cézanne; examination with infrared reflectography instrumentation indicates the portrait was carried out to a fair state of completion. The face tones have been repeated in the water above. The dark blue costume has been worked into the blues and greens of the surrounding landscape and one can readily make out the location of the sitter’s shoulders and arms. Parallel strokes are especially prominent in the foreground where stronger greens and oranges have been applied with low impasto. Distant space is made lighter and airier with intermittent strokes which permit the use of the white priming of the fabric as part of the design. Cross sections show a white priming measuring 32-120 µm in thickness. Above this is the usual single layer of paint, 16-48 µm thick, in samples from two areas of foliage. A third sample of foliage has three paint layers; this includes layers from the background of the portrait below the landscape, creamy yellow, and pale gray.
The lightening of the palette and of the application of paint continues in the 1883 View of the Bay of Marseilles with the Village of Saint-Henri. Here the foreground trees are the only strong dark color. Other colors are somewhat subdued through the mixing of a large proportion of lead white into many hues, and the distant water and mountains are painted in extremely pale tones. Except for the dark greens, all of the paint is applied in more broken tones with space between strokes which serves to lighten the form and enhance the feeling of strong light. In the distance, the regular brushwork of the foreground gives way to irregular strokes which leave great areas of white priming visible to further lighten and to increase the feeling of distance. A cross-section from this dark green of the foreground trees shows a white priming 40 µm thick and a single layer of green with blue particles which measures 16-20 µm in thickness. In these paler distant areas, pencil lines are visible and infrared reflectography shows the very free drawing with which the artist laid out the composition, indicating every building and clump of trees, as well as the distant mountains. Pencil drawing has been discovered in one other Cézanne at the Philadelphia Museum of Art: the 1885-87 Portrait of Madame Cézanne #63-181-6, which has not as yet received a thorough enough examination to be included in this discussion.
Some aspects of the technique used in Flowers in an Olive Jar, c. 1880, are different from the landscapes described earlier. While the background is painted with patches of parallel strokes of varying colors which allow the priming to show in places, the paint of the flowers is applied heavily, with each stroke depicting a petal, and sometimes buildup of several layers in a petal.
The Portrait of Madame Cézanne, 1886-87, has been painted with a lighter, more airy technique overall than seen before among the works examined. Thin paint mixtures have been applied in patches of parallel diagonal strokes in some places, e.g. on the cheek where peach, pink, and rose tones depict form. Elsewhere, for example in the background, the paint has been applied in washes and perhaps rubbed with a cloth to blend adjacent colors into one another. Again the white priming is used as part of the design, here as a highlight tone in the hair.
The landscapes of the last decade use the techniques already noted but each has its own unique characteristics. In Millstone in the Park of the Château Noir, 1898-1900, the familiar parallel strokes on the diagonal and a patch for each different color are used to paint the foliage in the background, but the foreground is handled differently. In the rocks, form is modeled by blending one tone smoothly into another, for example shrimp into peach into light gray into mauve into dark gray, all within a 1″ x 2″ area of rock. Dark lines applied to the uppermost paint surface delineate forms in the foreground and pull them forward while distant space becomes less clear in a screen of colorful brushwork. Two cross sections from an area of orange-yellow foliage in the background show a 24 µm thick white priming and a single 8-12 µm thick golden-brown layer of paint.
The paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire of 1902-04 and 1902-06 show further variations of technique. Individual forms begin to dissolve into abstraction as short, parallel strokes lay out smaller, more sharply distinct patches of color that emphasize the surface plane rather than the depth of space. It appears that a one-quarter inch wide brush may have been used to paint the foreground and a one-half inch wide brush for the distant sky and mountain. Two cross sections from green trees in E36-1-1 have a white priming 8-32 µm in thickness and an unusual succession of layers of paint: bright green, golden yellow, and bright green, each layer averaging about 40 µm in thickness. These indicate more overlapping of paint layers than was seen in the other paintings examined.
The Large Bathers, 1906, is thought to have been what Cézanne was working on when he died and is probably unfinished (7). The familiar technique is used with parallel diagonal strokes about one-inch long, creating patches of color. A one-half inch wide brush seems to have been used and the medium-rich oil paint was applied generously with a buildup of paint at the beginning of each stroke which overlaps the end of the preceding patch of strokes. The unvarnished paint is, at present, matte in appearance in spite of its medium-rich fluidity at the time of application. It appears that forms may have been laid out in black strokes of paint, followed by the application of color, then additional dark strokes painted last to further delineate form.
(https://www.mccrone.com/mm/investigation-materials-technique-paul-cezanne/)
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