The events of the Paris Commune and the Franco-Prussian War did not find any appreciable reflection in Cézanne’s works and life.
Many meaningful events occurred for him during these years of his life. He had very likely met Marie-Hortense Fiquet as early as 1869. The beautiful brunette with a classical face had shown up at Cézanne’s studio as a model.
Life with Hortense brought Paul new difficulties; he had to conceal her existence from his father because he was able to deprive Paul of his cash allowance.
Simultaneously, he painted a picture with bathers, Pastoral (Idyll), and a harsh, violent composition under the name of The Murder. Magdalene or Grief, suffering, full of passion and painted in a sharp expressive stroke, belongs to this same series of pictures. These pictures can be called narrative only in relation to the others. They were most likely his reflection on life, an outlet for his own passions and in a way a tribute to Symbolism. A Modern Olympia was the conclusion of this cycle.
29. Paul Cézanne, Bathers, c. 1890–1892.
Oil on canvas, 60 × 82 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
It is well known that, while discussing Manet’s Olympia, with a friend of the Impressionists, Doctor Gachet, Cézanne declared, “I can also do something similar to Olympia.” Gachet replied: “Well, do it.” So his canvas could be perceived as a kind of parody of Manet’s painting; there are many common components: the black-skinned servant as well as the flowers. It is, however, a protest aimed at the respected master; yet another of Cézanne’s arguments in his constant battle against Impressionism and against Manet. In comparison to Manet’s cold, elegant, model Victorine Meurent, Cézanne’s Olympia, curled into a ball in a ray of dazzling light, embodies a bundle of passions and, very likely, his personal drama. And the artist himself, enveloped in the smoke of a water pipe, contemplates her, like a spectator would the actress on the stage. Nevertheless, it was through the scandal caused by A Modern Olympia during the first exhibition of the Impressionists that Cézanne first became famous.
30. Paul Cézanne, The Bather, c. 1885.
Oil on canvas, 127 × 96.8 cm.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
31. Paul Cézanne, The Smoker, 1890–1892.
Oil on canvas, 92.5 × 73.5 cm.
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
32. Paul Cézanne, The Card Players, c. 1890–1895.
Oil on canvas, 47.5 × 57 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
He displayed there a number of canvases, but one of the most important critics of that time wrote that it was impossible to imagine a jury that would agree to accept Cézanne’s works. A comparatively liberal female journalist, hiding behind the pseudonym Marc de Montifaud, called A Modern Olympia the work of a mad man suffering from delirium tremens; a picture in which “a nightmare is represented as a sensual vision.” The opinions on Cézanne’s painting did not seem so awful against the overall background of criticism. The exhibition brought gratification, too; the collector Count Doria bought a landscape entitled The House of the Hanged Man, which was called an “appalling daub” in Leroy’s celebrated article.
However, after all these insults and derision, Cézanne retreated to Aix leaving Hortense and her son, the young Paul, who was born in 1872, in Paris.
During the third exhibition of the Impressionists in 1877, Cézanne was honoured with special attention of the Charivari critic Louis Leroy, who singled him out as the target of his most subtle insults. Paul exhibited canvases typical of the genres he preferred at that time: landscapes, portraits, some still lifes and bathers. Toward the end of the 1870s, bathers became the symbol of his figurative compositions. Cézanne’s work featured less and less narrative pictures, preferring more and more objects and motifs.
At the end of the 1870s and the beginning of the 1880s, Cézanne lived much of the time in Paris and worked in the area, in Melun or Médan-sur-Seine, at Zola’s. Thus he sometimes painted the banks of the Oise, the Auvers or the Pontoise where Pissarro lived. He could be sometimes seen in Normandy. Needless to say Cézanne regularly returned to his native Provence, as he was too attached to his roots. His principal difficulty at this time was his relationship with his family and the need to hide from his father the existence of his son and Hortense whom he could not resolve to marry. Despite all his contrivances, his father eventually found out about the grandchild’s existence.
The year 1886 was an extraordinary one in Cézanne’s life. The publication of Zola’s L’Œuvre was a shock to all the artists of the Impressionists’ circle.
The publication of L’Œuvre meant for Cézanne the end of a lifelong friendship with Zola. The character of Claude Lantier in L’Œuvre a failure who did not succeed in realising his ambitions, deeply annoyed him. On April 4, 1886, Cézanne wrote to Zola to thank him for the book, which he had not yet had the time to read. This was the last letter they sent each other. Zola’s novel was one of the reasons for Cézanne’s fleeing Paris. He was afraid that all his acquaintances would see in him the hero of L’Œuvre.
On the other hand, the problems of Cézanne’s family life solved themselves one after the other that year. In the spring of 1886, on the advice of his mother and sister Marie, Cézanne officially married Hortense at the Aix town hall. His son, Paul, was fourteen years old, and the matrimonial relations between him and Hortense were, in fact, dead. In October, at the age of eighty-eight, Louis-Auguste Cézanne died, and Paul inherited from him nearly 400,000 francs. The artist was thus able to settle all his debts and no longer needed to worry about his livelihood. Painting remained the only thing in his life.
Cézanne henceforth worked most of his time in Aix, rarely going to Paris. He refused to be exhibited, even with the Independents, where there was no jury. Gradually his circle of contacts became extremely narrow, the Paris of the arts almost forgot the strange Provençal.
33. Paul Cézanne, Woman with a Coffee Pot, c. 1890–1895.
Oil on canvas, 130.5 × 96.5 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
34. Paul Cézanne, Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1899.
Oil on canvas, 100 × 81 cm.
Petit Palais – Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris.
35. Paul Cézanne, Woman in Blue, 1898–1899.
Oil on canvas, 88.5 × 72 cm.
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
36. Paul Cézanne, Apples and Oranges, c. 1895–1900.
Oil on canvas, 74 × 93 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
37. Paul Cézanne, Still Life with Curtain, 1895.
Oil on canvas, 55 × 74.5 cm.
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
In 1895, the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, recently established in Paris, decided on a risky experiment: he resolved to organise an exhibition of Cézanne’s works in his gallery at 39, rue Lafitte. Cézanne agreed to the exhibition and sent Vollard nearly 150 rolled pictures from Aix. They