Paul Cézanne

The life of Paul Cézanne,
scene by scene

1. 1861Paris

   Paul was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839. His father had started out selling hats and became a banker, and he wanted his son to study law. Paul's closest school friend was Émile Zola, the future novelist. Zola, already in Paris, kept urging him to become a painter, and at twenty-two Paul finally went. He worked at an open studio where anyone could draw from a model, and there he met Camille Pissarro. By the fall he was worn out and went home to Aix. For the rest of his life he moved back and forth between Paris and the south.

2. 1872Pontoise

   In January 1872, Cézanne and his companion Hortense Fiquet had a son, also named Paul. He kept this from his father for years. That year he went to Pontoise, northwest of Paris, to paint outdoors beside Pissarro. His dark, rough pictures grew lighter, and in 1874 he showed work at the first Impressionist exhibition.

3. 1886Aix-en-Provence

   Zola published a novel, L'Œuvre, about a painter who fails. Many readers saw Cézanne in the hero. After this the old friendship faded. That April Cézanne married Hortense, and in October his father died, leaving him a large fortune. From now on he could paint without worrying about money.

4. 1888Paris

   Cézanne painted his wife Hortense more than twenty times. In Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress, she sits in a yellow chair holding a small sprig of flowers. Look at the dark band that runs along the wall behind her. On her left and on her right, it sits at different heights. The room seems to tilt a little, and Cézanne left it that way.

   Painted around this timeMadame Cézanne (Hortense Fiquet, 1850–1922) in a Red Dress
5. 1890The studio

   Cézanne painted apples all his life. In Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses, painted around 1890, they sit in rounded heaps on a rumpled white cloth. Red and yellow run together inside a single apple in short strokes, so each one seems to swell outward. This painting once belonged to Claude Monet.

   Painted around this timeStill Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses
6. 1890Aix-en-Provence

   Farmworkers from around the Jas de Bouffan, the family estate, became Cézanne's models. He painted card players five times. In the version on this site, three men sit around a small table while a fourth stands behind them, a pipe in his mouth, looking down. Four more pipes hang in a rack on the wall. Nobody speaks. Every man keeps his eyes on his own cards.

   Painted around this timeThe Card Players
7. 1895Paris

   At fifty-six, Cézanne finally had his first solo exhibition. A young dealer, Ambroise Vollard, hung his paintings in a small Paris gallery. Cézanne had spent years far from the Paris art world, and from this point on younger painters began to seek him out.

8. 1906Aix-en-Provence

   In his last years Cézanne painted Mont Sainte-Victoire, the mountain near Aix, dozens of times. In October 1906 he was caught in a storm while painting outdoors and collapsed. He died a few days later, still working almost to the end.