Cezanne Pulls it Off

Today at the National Gallery as usual I walked right past Monet's dreadful waterlily daubs (he never knew when enough was enough!) and Renoir's horrible sugary confections, which as usual had a horde of gawkers in front of them, snapping away with their iPhones. I sought out the areas where there was no human traffic in order to have some quiet time alone with some of my favourite paintings.

As I stood in front of one of my favourite paintings in London, Degas' Spartan Girls Challenging Boys (c.1860), four elderly cockney men shuffled by and surveyed the naked young people depicted. One of the men said, " 'Ere, Jack would luv dis! Cor! Look at  chests on that one!".

Looking at the lovely, tough little Cezanne self portrait from 1880, I seemed to remember that it is the same self portrait that Aldous Huxley writes of when he describes staring at it in a book for hours under the influence of mescaline. I was only under the influence of a chicken sandwich from the National Gallery cafe, but still the painting worked its magic on me. And then there was his Avenue Jas de Bouffan (1871) hung nearby. This was a terrific little painting. Buttery slabs of green slathered on the canvas to create a great sense of shadowy depth. Wonderful. And then, his Unfinished Still Life with Blue Jug (1892). This was great to see because it reveals how Cezanne structured his work from the beginning. You can see his characteristic habit of drawing up the objects in blue paint in double or even triple outline, which immediately gives a sense of energy to the objects. Then he comes in with the almost random scumbles of brown and blue-grey, which is really no more than his 'killing' the deadly white of the canvas in order to 'own' the working space.



Edgar Degas, Spartan Girls Challenging Boys (c.1860).



Paul Cezanne, Avenue Jas de Bouffan (1871).

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