How To Look Like Cézanne

TERENCE CLARKE thinks the strength and beauty of the artist’s work lies not in his technical gifts but his unique way of seeing. He explains why

- Terence Clarke

Looking at a great painting by Paul Cézanne can make us think about how it was made and how it operates as a work of art. I think it’s important to understand that the artist, like his contemporaries Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, was, in a sense, untutored.

He lacked the natural drawing facility that would have gained him entry into the atelier system proper. His early paintings show little finesse and his development to maturity in 1887-8 – when he painted this picture, Pot of Primroses and Fruit – had been slow and difficult. His training had largely been before nature in Provence and Pontoise with Camille Pissarro. If one compares his early work to Claude Monet’s, you can see Cézanne’s natural gifts were limited.

I also think he had a poor visual memory. The translation of observed facts onto a canvas is essentially a function of memory. One looks, memorises and then makes a mark. A glance at his invented figure work reinforces my impression. Finally, I think he never understood the conventions of perspective in the way that, say, Edgar Degas instinctively did. For Cézanne, each act of memory or “sensation” was hard won.

HOW DID HE DO IT?