The University of Chicago Press

Seeing Czanne
Author(s): Richard Shiff

Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Summer, 1978), pp. 769-808
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Seeing Cezanne
Richard Shiff
After a period of relative obscurity, around 1890 Cezanne's art began to

receive critical attention from an ever expanding
group of
artist's
old
his
new symcommentators-the
impressionist companions,
bolist admirers, and a diverse body of critics and journalists. This mass of
early Cezanne criticism is by no means univocal and includes statements
on the artist and his art which are in radical opposition to one another.
Yet there seems to be a surprising degree of conformity in the early
descriptions of the appearance of Cezanne's paintings. In other words,
numerous commentators saw the same group of stylistic characteristics
as significant, but their interpretations of the meaning or intention behind these definable stylistic elements diverged widely. In general,
nearly all the early commentary can be categorized as describing
Cezanne's art as if it were the product of either impressionist or symbolist concerns. I propose to demonstrate that, contrary to the prevailing
twentieth-century interpretation,1 the impressionist view of Cezanne's
art more nearly corresponds to his own intentions as he revealed them
through both his stylistic choices and his theoretical pronouncements
A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities enabled me to complete
preparatory work for this essay during the summer of 1975.
1. Most modern art historical accounts have grouped Cezanne among the so-called
postimpressionists, a category originally employed by Roger Fry to refer to all French
artists whose styles developed in reaction to or as a refinement of impressionism. The
major postimpressionists other than Cezanne-Seurat, Gauguin, and Van Gogh-have
been closely identified with symbolist concerns; and Cezanne himself is generally described
by twentieth-century historians as exhibiting many aspects of the symbolist aesthetic, especially the concern for discovering an ideally expressive "form" or "structure."
0093-1896/78/0404-0003$02.91
769
770
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cizanne
and that, therefore, his significance for his own time should be reevaluated. But I would also argue that neither the symbolist nor the
impressionist view of Cezanne's art need be accepted as the one right
view today. Extending that thesis, I would call into question any art
historical argument which purports to demonstrate that one and only
one view of an artist or work of art can be correctly applied. For different viewers, different interpretations may be "correct" or most meaningful, even if at variance with the artist's intended effect.
When the historian chooses to study a particular work of art, he
does so either because its contemporary audience considered the work
significant or because he himself considers it significant. Often both
justifications for study and evaluation coincide, as they do in the case of
Cezanne's works--his paintings were admired in his lifetime and they
are admired now. Recent evaluations of Cezanne's art, however, are not
identical to those rendered by his contemporaries. Not only do we seem
to have settled upon a more monolithic approach to the appraisal of the
artist's motivation and expressive intentions, but we have even given
meanings to some observed visual qualities (such as "flatness") which the
artist's contemporaries never perceived. If the historian wishes to consider the significance of the artist's oeuvre in relation to its own cultural
milieu, he must be careful to evaluate all aspects of that art as it was seen
or experienced within its own environment. For this reason I have taken
special care to define categories such as "impressionist" and "symbolist"
by means of concepts considered valid in France in the late nineteenth
century and to employ abstract or descriptive words such as "true,"
"sincere," "primitive," "bright," or "awkward" as they were then employed. I have also sought to distinguish among types of "impressionists," for example, Academic or Salon impressionists as opposed
to the more familiar independent impressionists. Furthermore, in discussing matters of style, I have analyzed paintings in terms of stylistic
elements actually recognized as significant at the time of the production
of the paintings and have attempted to make only those stylistic comparisons which would have been meaningful then. Hence, Cezanne may be
compared to Bouguereau, even though no direct relationship is postulated, while it does not serve the purposes of this study to compare
Cezanne to Picasso, even though Picasso admired his work.
To say that Cezanne's contemporaries interpreted his art in opposRichard Shiff is an associate professor of art at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A related article, "The End of Impressionism: A Study of Theories of Artistic Expression," will appear later this
year.
Critical Inquiry
Summer1978
771
ing manners is to say that various stylistic elements were set into different contexts or taken to communicate different meanings. How did this
happen?
Obviously, the divergent aims and expectations which impressionist
and symbolist observers brought to bear on Ceizanne's art may account
for much of the confusion. The impressionist artist's primary concern
was to suggest or make reference to (although not, in a strict sense, to
depict) a spontaneous impression produced in contact with nature. This
"impression," which represented "truth," was identified with the direct
interaction of the sense organs (or, alternatively, the perceiving consciousness) and the external environment. Both antiestablishment
figures, like Monet and Pissarro, and successful Salon artists, like Detaille
and Bastien-Lepage, were associated with the impressionist or naturalist
movement. On the whole a somewhat younger group, the symbolists,
often opposed impressionism; they considered it a materialistic movement devoted to external appearances and thereby lacking intense emotion and universal meaning. The symbolists sought their "truth" through
the synthetic "idea," the conceptual abstraction resulting from an emotional and intellectual response to external reality. They were "symbolist" not in the sense of using fixed, conventional symbols or allegorical
subjects but in terms of using a process of discovering that ideational or
"symbolic" content which transcends the world of transient impressions.
The painters Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Maurice Denis and
the critics Fetlix Feneon and Albert Aurier were regarded as symbolists.
While different groups of viewers may have sought different values
in Ce'zanne's art, the artist's manner of painting and personality both
contributed to the ambiguity of his work. Until the last decade of his life
he seldom exhibited, and even then his paintings seemed unfinished.
He was generally regarded as an "incomplete" artist and often as a
"primitive," one whose art was in some way simple or rudimentary,
devoid of the refinements and complexities of his materialistic, industrialized (and, some commentators added, atheistic) society.2 He was seen
2. For Cezanne as "incomplete," see, e.g., Thadee Natanson, "Paul Cezanne," Revue
blanche 9 (1 December 1895): 497; and Gustave Geffroy, "Paul Cezanne" (16 November
1895), in La Vie artistique(Paris, 1900), p. 218. For Cezanne as "primitive," see, e.g., Georges
Lecomte, L'Art impressionniste(Paris, 1892), pp. 30-31; and Maurice Denis, "Cezanne"
(September 1907), in Thiories, 1890-1910: Du symbolismeet de Gauguin vers un nouvel ordre
classique, 2d ed. (Paris, 1912), p. 246. The late nineteenth-century notion of the "primitive"
artist was very broad. Included in the category of primitives were artists of the ancient
Orient, artists of the earlier stages of the development of various Western styles (such as
the Archaic Greeks and the pre-Raphaelite Italians), provincial or uneducated European
artists, and those of contemporary non-European societies. With regard to the negative
evaluation of modern Western European society, see, e.g., Victor de Laprade, Le Sentiment
de la nature chez les modernes,2d ed. (Paris, 1870), pp. 483-88; and Albert Aurier, "Essai sur
une nouvelle m6thode de critique" (1892), "Le Symbolisme en peinture: Paul Gauguin" (9
772
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cezanne
as an isolated man who lived apart from other painters and found
human relationship and communication difficult.
Yet for some symbolists it was this alienation and mystery which
made Ctezanne's art so attractive. As early as 1891, F6neion found it
appropriate to refer to "the Cetzanne tradition," a designation which
indicates the influence of the legendary account of the artist promulgated by Gauguin and his associates.3 Gauguin had painted
landscapes with the reclusive artist during the summer of 1881, was
impressed by his odd style, both personal and pictorial, and in a letter to
Emile Schuffenecker of 14 January 1885 described Ceizanne as embodying the mysticism of the Orient.4 Such a characterization held special
meaning for those like Gauguin who had come more and more to search
for an ultimate truth in the experience of the mystical, the transcendental, the intensely real. For the symbolist painter or writer, primitives lived
in harmony with the real world; they had an intuitive, mythic understanding of their environment. Most modern Europeans, in contrast,
viewed the world through false and short-sighted analytic reason and
thus saw only immediate causes and effects, not eternal universal principles. They were Christians who could not see the truth of Buddhism;
they were socially indoctrinated Parisians who could not see the purer
structure of human society in provincial Brittany; they were refined
painters of nature who could not see the expressive power of a flat area
of color surrounded by broad outline. For Gauguin and the symbolists,
C6zanne, living in isolation in his seemingly unsophisticated native Provence, qualified as an enlightened contemporary, an inspiring force, a
primitive artist.
Maurice Denis, one of the artists listed by F6neion as an adherent of
the "Cezanne tradition," later made several associations which came to
have much more significance for younger generations than did Gauguin's reference to Cezanne's "Oriental" qualities. Denis, a more skillful
theorist than painter, is today best known for having written in 1890 that
the most expressive aspect of a work of art is not its subject but its
abstract formal design.5 Like many nineteenth-century students of art
theory, Denis believed that artistic communication depends on a primary
emotional response to elemental sensual stimuli--lines, colors, perhaps
simple shapes. Such an immediate emotional response precedes any
February 1891), and "Les Isoles: Vincent van Gogh" (January 1890), in Oeuvresposthumes
(Paris, 1893), pp. 202, 216, 262-63.
3. Felix Feneon, "Paul Gauguin" (23 May 1891), in Oeuvresplus que compltes, ed. Joan
Halperin, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1970), 1:192.
4. Lettresde Gauguin a'safemme et a ses amis, ed. Maurice Malingue (Paris, 1946), p. 45.
Felix F6neon, Andre Mellerio, and Emile Bernard also associated Cezanne's style with
mysticism.
5. Denis, "Definition du neo-traditionnisme" (August 1890), in Theories, pp. 1-13.
Critical Inquiry
Summer1978
773
recognition of an identifiable natural form. The elements of vision become as important as the images finally built out of them. The implication of this general theory-in some of its forms called "empathy"
theory, in others, the theory of "expression"-is that the modern artist
must turn away from overly illusionistic systems of depiction, systems
developed to create the image of an object-filled natural world but which
lack any emphasis on the abstract structure or the expressive elements of
that world. In the past, according to Denis, the ancient Greeks had
produced an art which was founded in nature and yet translated natural
appearances by means of expressive visual elements. Nicolas Poussin, as
a modern follower of the Greek classical tradition, also produced an
expressive art. His compositions seemed to lend themselves to an abstract
formal reading. His landscapes and figures were not only nature but
geometry. As far as Denis was concerned, then, Poussin was a successful
artist and could be used as the standard to whom others could be compared.6
Denis compared Gauguin to Poussin, calling the former "a kind of

Poussin without classical culture" who studied primitive forms instead of
those of classical antiquity.' Like Poussin, Gauguin had an expressive
"style" and, as a symbolist, the style was based on "the correspondence
between [abstract] forms and emotions." Moreover, it followed for Denis
that, as a symbolist, Gauguin's masters were the (European) primitives,
the Japanese, and, above all, Cezanne.8 Thus, it was logical for Denis,
having drawn Poussin and Gauguin together, to add Cezanne to complete the formulation. As Poussin sought true artistic expression
through classical antiquity, and Gauguin through the primitive, Cezanne,
Denis asserted, sought it through nature--Cezanne is "the Poussin of
impressionism" and "the Poussin of the still life and landscape." Like
Poussin and Gauguin, like the classical and the primitive, Cezanne
achieved "the just equilibrium between [the sensation of] nature and
[emotionally expressive] style."9
But if Cezanne was a reincarnation of Poussin, he was not complete;
he lacked the Academic master's refinement. Denis recognized that
Cezanne's monumental "Large Bathers" (fig. 1) was "gauchement
Poussinesque"-it was awkward.10 In his theoretical writings Denis seems
to have given his notion of distortion or awkwardness, the "gaucherie,"
nearly as much significance as his notion of "style." Cezanne, who had
"style, that is, [formal] order through synthesis," also had "gaucherie,"a
6. Denis, "De la gaucherie des primitifs" (July 1904), in Theories, p. 171.
7. Denis, "L'Influence de Paul Gauguin" (October 1903), in Thiories, p. 166.
8. Denis, "Les Arts a Rome ou la methode classique" (1898), in Theories,pp. 50, 61, here
and elsewhere, my translation.
9. Denis, "Cezanne," and "De Gauguin, de Whistler, et de l'exces des theories"
(November 1905), in Thtories, pp. 252, 197; cf. also p. 239.
10. Denis, "De Gauguin et de van Gogh au classicism" (May 1909), in Thiories, p. 255.
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FIG. 1.-Paul Cezanne,LargeBathers(c. 1902-06). PhiladelphiaMuseum

Wyatt,staff photographer.
Critical Inquiry
Summer1978
775
result, according to Denis, of his originality and sincerity. Because the

artist struggled so directly with the expression of his sensation of nature,
because he refused to follow conventional formulations or a preconceived notion of the picturesque, his art was awkward like that of a
primitive.11 This awkwardness, Denis argued, was characteristic of those
modern artists who had direct contact with nature, but, he added, we
should not admire it for its own sake; it was simply a by-product of a
modern sincere art and difficult to avoid.12
Paul Gauguin, Maurice Denis, and their associates--among them
Vincent van Gogh, Emile Bernard, and Joris Karl Huysmans-have left
an image of Cezanne as a founding spirit of symbolism, a primitive, and
perhaps even a classicist, albeit an awkward one. Where is the evidence
of this gaucherie? What specifically were these early viewers seeing in
Cezanne's art? Van Gogh, in a moment of simplicity, spoke of "how
clumsy [Cezanne's] touch in certain studies is," then attributed the awkwardness to working outdoors "when the mistral was blowing."13 Huysmans, like Denis, mentioned the distorted linear contours of the artist's
"touch" or brushstroke ('facture")
bathers.14 Both these elements-the
and the linear outlining-are clearly visible to us today in the Tannahill
"Bathers," a characteristic work which probably dates from the early
1880s (fig. 2). The "awkwardness" of this small study is revealed when
the painting is compared to a refined large-scale work produced about
the same time, Bouguereau's "Bathers" of 1884 (fig. 3). The two paintings are, of course, quite different in kind-one is a small study, possibly
unfinished and not intended for exhibition, the other a major work by
an artist who exhibited regularly. The more finished work, however,
represents a norm, for Bouguereau was frequently classified by his contemporaries as an Academic naturalist, a master of the painter's craft
and of imitating natural effects. He was, in addition, regarded as an
artist whose subject matter (like Cezanne's) often appeared opaque and
devoid of poetic content.15 If Cezanne's art seemed crude or distorted, it
seemed so in comparison with the art of Bouguereau, an accepted standard of naturalistic refinement.16
11. Denis, "Cezanne," pp. 239, 243, 246.
12. Denis, "La Reaction nationaliste" (15 May 1905), and "Cezanne" in Thtories, pp.
191, 247.
13. Van Gogh to Bernard, June 1888, The CompleteLetters of Vincent van Gogh, ed.
V. W. van Gogh, 3 vols. (New York, 1958), 3:499.
14. Joris Karl Huysmans, Certains (1889), in Oeuvres complptes,18 vols. (Paris, 1929),
10:39; Denis, "Cezanne," p. 248.
15. See, e.g., F. Grindelle, "Une Visite au salon," La Critiquephilosophique(24 June
1882), p. 330.
16. The art of Bastien-Lepage (who died in 1884) was also regarded as a standard for
naturalistic painting. His style, however, was considered decidedly "impressionist," and
this, for many viewers, implied a more subjective naturalism than that found in
Bouguereau. Meissonier, too, represented for the late nineteenth-century viewer an objec-
Richard Shiff
776
Seeing Cezanne
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FIG. 2.-Paul Cezanne, Bathers (c. 1883). Photo courtesy of the Detroit Institute of
Arts, bequest of Robert H. Tannahill.
Thefacture, or brushwork, of Cezanne's "Bathers" is characterized

by clearly visible individual parallel strokes. These strokes may at times
suggest the notation of planar elements of a volumetric form or even
individual leaves of a tree, but most often the strokes appear as an
abstraction, a loosely structured pattern that gives definition to the pictorial surface by means of color. The strokes seem hastily applied and give
the image a sketchy, unfinished quality. The color pattern seems abrupt;
no transitional tones mediate the shifts from light green to dark green,
from green to ochre, or from yellow-green to pale blue. In contrast,
Bouguereau's brushstrokes and colors are a study in subtlety. The visibility of the individual stroke is to a great extent suppressed, and a traditional system of chiaroscuro modeling is employed-that is, the passage
tive naturalism. A small minority of critics argued that the radical impressionism of the late
works of Manet and Monet represented a standard for objective vision, but most considered their art highly personalized and subjective.
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FIG. 3.-William
stitute of Chicago.
Adolphe Bouguereau, The Bathers (1884). Courtesy of the Art In-
778
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cezanne
from light to dark or from one color to another is gradual; transitional

tones eliminate any abrupt shifts in value or hue. Cezanne's "Bathers"
also presents the multiple sketchy contour lines which Denis and others
found so problematic.17 The figures seem crudely drawn and anatomy is
not well defined. The seated figure to the left is awkwardly proportioned; its neck is long and thick, its head is small, and its legs are
tapered to a crippling degree. The background foliage seems, in places,
to impinge upon the physical integrity of the foreground figures as it
overlaps their contours. Bouguereau's bathers may be vapid, but they
have a convincing pictorial character as illusionistic volumetric forms.
We should not wonder then that Cezanne's art, in comparison, was seen
as awkward, full of gaucherie.
The artists and critics who observed this awkward art, those few who
in the 1880s and 1890s wrote at length about Cezanne, nevertheless
praised him. In fact, during this period it was common for that which
was crude, awkward, or distorted to be accepted as somehow more sincerely expressive than that which was refined. We know that Denis
linked Cezanne's gaucherie to his originality and sincerity. Earlier, in
1895, Gustave Geffroy reviewed the artist's first one-man exhibition and
explained what he called "the awkwardness, the lack of perspective and
balance, and the unfinished aspect" as signs of a "scrupulous observer,
like a primitive, deeply concerned with truth."18A still earlier statement
provided general support for Geffroy's critical position: in 1883 the
prominent poet Armand Sully-Prudhomme had written, in his major
theoretical work "Expression in the Fine Arts," that "a certain awkwardness [gaucherie], the guarantee of sincerity, may be preferable to an
overly great facility of execution."'9
The attitude which Sully-Prudhomme expressed was frequently
applied to specific works of art in Salon reviews. Thus, the figural style of
Puvis de Chavannes (fig. 4) was repeatedly seen as crude and distorted
yet superior to the refinement of an artist like Bouguereau. Puvis was
described in the 1880s as Cezanne was in the 1890s and later-as a
source for symbolism, as a primitive, as sincere and unconventional, and
as a master of expressive abstraction.20 Many critics extended their initial
acceptance of unintentional awkwardness by choosing to interpret it as
deliberate "distortion" ("diformation").Thus, in 1895 and 1904 Roger
Marx asserted that Puvis' distorted forms were intentionally expressive
17. Denis, "Cezanne," pp. 248-49.
18. Geffroy, "Paul Cezanne," pp. 219-20. Geffroy argued that others among
Cezanne's paintings were, on the contrary, "admirably balanced and finished"; the artist
appeared to be both "traditional" and "primitive."
19. Rene FranCois Armand Sully-Prudhomme, "L'Expression dans les beaux-arts"
(1883), in Oeuvresde Sully-Prudhomme,Prose, 7 vols. (Paris, 1898), 5:22.
20. See, e.g., Georges Lafenestre, "Le Salon de 1887," Revue des deux mondes 81 (1
June 1887): 607-9.
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780
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cezanne
and intellectually profound, not the product of ignorance but of mature

calculation. For Marx, Cezanne, like Puvis, "deliberately exaggerates"
the linear form of his figures for expressive purposes.21
Cezanne's paintings were also characterized as distorted or awkward
because they appeared to lack illusionistic space; they seemed flat. Marx
linked Cezanne to symbolism and primitivism not only because of his
linear distortion but also because of his broad, flat application of uniformly bright pigment.22 Similarly, Georges Lecomte, in an essay of
1899, emphasized Cezanne's lack of spatial illusion; Lecomte appreciated the harmonies produced by the "very simple, flat tones" but
was disturbed by the artist's failure to distinguish the various levels of
depth in a landscape.23 Had Lecomte been viewing the Tannahill
"Bathers," he would have issued just this complaint, for the lower landscape area seems to consist of four horizontal bands of color-pale
yellow-orange (or ochre), blue-green, yellow-orange, and green-which
represent a stream (blue-green), its sandy banks (yellow-orange), and a
meadow beyond (green), and the colors themselves vary little in intensity
as they conventionally would if indicating spatial recession. In addition,
the horizontal bands are of nearly equal width and of similar facture,
again offering no hint of relative spatial displacement. It is not surprising then that, like other observers of Cezanne's style, Denis described the
artist's color as lacking value gradation and as giving a surface effect
comparable to that of the flat color in works by Gauguin and Bernard.24
Characteristically, Denis saw this deviation from the standards of
conventional technique as related to classicism and, especially,
primitivism. In one of his most evasive formulations he connected both
the awkward rendering of objects and the lack of conventional spatial
perspective to the mental processes of the primitive. "The Primitive,"
Denis wrote in 1904, "knows objects with his intellect as so many entities
distinct from himself; he ranks them always in the same plane, the plane
of his consciousness." In other words, Denis argued that the world of
immediate conscious experience is a world of only one plane, a flat
world; the true image of reality, what Denis and others called the "idea,"
is two-dimensional, flat. The primitive, according to Denis, does not
concern himself with spatial illusion; he "prefers reality [the conceptual
idea] to the appearance of reality [the perceptual effect]."25
Denis' argument may seem obscure, but the association of flatness
21. Roger Marx, "Les Salons de 1895," Gazettedes beaux-arts 13 (May 1895): 359; "Le
Salon d'Automne," Gazettedes beaux-arts32 (December 1904): 462-64.
22. Marx, "Le Salon d'Automne," pp. 462-64. Marx is somewhat inconsistent on the
issue of whether or not Cezanne's color is modeled or nuanced.
23. Georges Lecomte, "Paul Cezanne," Revue d'art 1 (9 December 1899): 86.
24. Denis, "Cezanne," pp. 250-52. Like Marx, Denis is ambivalent on the question of
whether or not Cezanne creates volumetric form (see p. 249).
25. Denis, "De la gaucherie des primitifs," pp. 170, 171.
Critical Inquiry
Summer1978
781
with conceptualization is a familiar one. We think of the objective external world (whether a projection of our minds or an independent reality)
volumetric. We think of that which is twoas three-dimensional,
dimensional or flat as an abstraction, an immaterial conceptualization of
a material substance. In the late nineteenth century Charles Blanc, a
respected theorist of the French art establishment and neither a symbolist nor an impressionist, spoke of flat, unmodeled color as "symbolic,"
the color of intellectualized convention, not of nature.26
There is another sense, not so accessible to us today, in which
Cezanne's paintings were logically seen as flat: they were "atmospheric."
Atmospheric flatness was a notion very seriously considered by Cezanne's
contemporaries. To the extent that his paintings could be seen as vibrating fields of color suggesting an even, ubiquitous light, they could be
seen as atmospheric; and to the extent that these paintings could be seen
as lacking chiaroscuro modeling, they could be seen as flat.27 Among
many naturalists of Cezanne's generation it was customary to produce a
uniform vibrating light through the use of contrasting relatively intense
hues and by suppressing value gradation, or chiaroscuro. Since a lack of
chiaroscuro implied a lack of depth, the atmospheric vibrating field of
color was, by its very nature, to be interpreted as flat-flatness, if produced through a uniformity of value but not necessarily of hue, was
atmospheric.
An alternative manner of suggesting atmospheric flatness can be
seen in the Tannahill "Bathers"; as in Cezanne's other mature works, the
foreground and background elements are rendered with similar color
intensity and facture.28 This technique produces a unification of the
painted surface or a unity of apparent spatial plane, that is, flatness. This
kind of unification was traditionally associated with the effect of atmospheric light and was frequently noted as an aspect of impressionist
painting.29 The early critics of Cezanne often described his visual effects
as those of a brilliantly colored tapestry; they were alluding to the vibrating field of bright color and the unifying effect of atmospheric light as
well as to a concomitant surface flatness. Lecomte, for example, wrote in
1899: "Often [Cezanne's] studies of nature are without depth. They give
the impression of a sumptuous tapestry without spatial distance."30
Cezanne's simplified, seemingly unrefined drawing and com26. Charles Blanc, Voyagede la haute Egypte (Paris, 1876), p. 99.
27. I have traced the evolution of the association of bright even light, bright color, and
lack of chiaroscuro with the concept of atmosphere in nineteenth-century French painting
in a doctoral dissertation which is to be published in a revised form. See my "Impressionist
Criticism, Impressionist Color, and Cezanne" (Yale University, 1973), pts. 2 and 3.
28. Cf. the works of Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro in this respect.
29. For the traditional association, see Mme. Cave's comments on Veronese in her La
Couleur, 3d ed. (Paris, 1863), p. 118; for the connection with impressionism, see Charles
Ephrussi, "Exposition des artistes independants," Gazettedes beaux-arts21 (May 1880): 486.
30. Lecomte, "Paul Cezanne," p. 86.
782
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cezanne
position--often described by his early admirers not only as "simple"

but as "awkward"-was consistent with both notions of flatness: the symbolist's conceptual "flatness" of the idea and the naturalist's perceptual
"flatness" of the atmosphere. Today we might not be inclined to characterize Cezanne's compositions as "simple," but to the late nineteenthcentury viewer they appeared so in comparison with those of an
Academic master like Poussin (see fig. 5). Cezanne's paintings did not
seem subject to a traditional detailed analysis of the interrelationships of
representational elements. As I have noted, critics often evaded such
analysis; they chose to discuss the "tapestry" effect in Cezanne's art,
describing the total field of vibrating color rather than its separate parts
and their relationships to one another. How much could a critic find to
say about a very straightforward rhythmic grouping of bathers arranged
as alternating half-length and full-length forms in front of a repetitious
massing of foliage (fig. 2)? How much could he say about three skulls
lined up on a tabletop (fig. 6) or about a stiff frontal portrait figure
before an imprecisely defined background of drapery and wallpaper
(fig. 7)? For certain critics little needed to be said. The simplicity (or the
awkwardness) seemed primitive, elemental, primary; and if, as a symbolist, a critic valued the concept, the idea, he argued that if essential and
true and sincerely realized, this idea must be simple and known directly
in its elemental form. If, on the other hand, as an impressionist, a critic
valued the percept, he argued that the atmospheric effect must be
known immediately, as an impression, as a simple form free of the conventional refinements of Academic painting. Each critic, symbolist or
impressionist, would, in addition, link the simple or primitive to the
naive and spontaneous, qualities nearly universally admired at the end
of the nineteenth century. Hence, for great numbers of viewers having
either a symbolist or impressionist orientation, Cezanne's reputation
could not suffer from the association of his style with that of the simple
and awkward primitive. Lecomte perceived the situation accurately
when he suggested that "at two successive stages of art [naturalism and
symbolism] Cezanne had the bizarre fate of having been praised less for
his qualities than for his faults"-his awkward distortion and flatness
won him general acclaim.31
We need to know something more about the odd notion of atmospheric flatness. We have seen that for Denis, the symbolist, conceptual
flatness was related to an elemental manner of thinking, the thinking of
the primitive. Atmospheric flatness, on the other hand, was for naturalists and impressionists related to an elemental manner of seeing; it was
closely associated with the impression, the transient primary sensation of
nature which was, of course, the object of investigation of impressionist
painting. In the late nineteenth century the painter's equivalent for the
31. Ibid. Lecomte had made essentially the same point in 1892. See his "Des tendences de la peinture moderne," L'Art moderne(Brussels), 28 February 1892, p. 67.
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Critical Inquiry
Summer1978
785
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Detroit Institute of Arts, bequest of Robert H. Tannahill.
impression seemed most often to be a field of vibrating brilliant color

with little or no specific differentiation of represented tangible objects.
To define contours precisely would be to impose a conceptual ordering
upon vision.32 The immediate impression, this vibrating field of color,
32. Cf. Cezanne to Bernard, 23 October 1905, Paul Cizanne, Correspondence,ed. John
Rewald (Paris, 1937), p. 277. All further page citations to Cezannes letters, unless otherwise indicated, will be to this volume.
786
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cezanne
was flat not only in the technical sense that it lacked chiaroscuro gradations but in the very physical sense that it was projected directly onto the
planar surface of the retina. The immediate visual sensation was regarded as essentially two-dimensional; only thoughtful interpretation,
conceptually ordering the initial image, would produce the illusion of
volume. For the symbolist, a vision of a flat, two-dimensional world may
have been true because it was an image of an intellectual or inner spiritual reality; but for the impressionist, flatness gave a true picture of the
world because it represented a recording of the individual's interaction
with a totally external reality. It represented a vision that was primordial
and unadulterated.
The adult, the child, the embryo-the more primitive the stage of
life, the more primary and directly true is the experience of one's own
inner life and of the external environment. So argued the positivist
Emile Littre in 1860. Littre, a versatile scholar and compiler of dictionaries, was by his own description a "disciple" of Auguste Comte. But
Littre was a positivist who stuck to the facts; Comte, who had invented a
new religion of Humanity in the 1850s, had, according to his "disciple,"
retreated from verifiable fact and slipped back two stages from the positive (or scientific) to the theological manner of thinking.33 Littre's personality was less complex than Comte's and his thinking was better
known to the public. His position with regard to the theory of knowledge
was popular and more than likely was influential in creating an atmosphere for a critical appreciation of impressionism. Littre identified the
simple, the elemental, the primitive with the impression; at some very
early stage in life all that exists is in the form of impressions from which
all knowledge will derive. Littre wrote:
Yes, there is something that is primordial; but it is neither the
subject [mind] nor the object [matter], neither the self nor the
non-self: it is the impression perceived [l'impressionperpue]. A perceived impression does not in any sense constitute the idea of the
subject or of the object, it is only the element of these ideas [which
grow when the impression] is repeated a certain number of
times. ... We never know anything but our impressions.34
Thus Littre argued that all that is directlygiven as true is the world of our
impressions, the most primitive world of experience.
33. Comte and his followers conceived of the history of mankind as having three
stages: the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive (scientific). For Littre's attitude
toward Comte, see his introduction of 1864 to the new edition of Comte's Principes de
philosophiepositive (Paris, 1868).
34. Emile Littre, "De quelques points de physiologie psychique" (March 1860), in La
Science au point de vue philosophique,4th ed. (Paris, 1876), pp. 313-20. Littre, of course, was
referring to any sense impression, not just visual impressions. His position is similar to
those of Condillac, Maine de Biran, and Dr. Cabanis, as well as that of Comte.
Critical Inquiry
Summer1978
787
The positivist's theory implies that the impression is not to be

carelessly identified solely with "objective" reality, seemingly a wellunderstood external world of material substances. The impression is
neither subject nor object. It exists in the life of the individual prior to
the realization of the subject/object distinction; and once that distinction
is made, the impression is characterized as the interaction of a subject
and an object. Thus, an art of the impression should, according to
nineteenth-century positivist theory, express both the perceived object
and the perceiving subject. The nineteenth-century critics of impressionist art, however, often emphasized one factor at the expense of
the other. Alfred de Lostalot, for example, wrote a favorable review of
an 1883 exhibition of Monet's work in which he stressed fidelity to the
perceived object. He argued that Monet reproduced exactly what he
saw, and if his colors seemed unusual, they were not chosen according to
personal taste but were the result of an unusually accurate and refined
vision.35 Zola, on the other hand, emphasized the perceiving subject. In 1866 he stated a very general critical principle: "A work, for me,
is a man; I wish to find in this work a temperament, a particular and
unique accent." And Zola's most famous pronouncement, made the
same year, defined the expression of the perceived object as dependent
upon the individual character of the perceiving subject: "A work of art is
a bit of nature seen through a temperament."36 Zola's formulation, similar to those of earlier French Romantic theorists, might have appealed to
the French positivist in its recognition of both subjective and objective
factors in the psychology of the creation of a work of art.
In the twentieth century we have come to think of impressionism as
an art of an exterior reality, while we consider symbolism a far more
subjective mode. We seem to have accepted a part of the symbolist view
of impressionism for the whole. The symbolists themselves condemned
the more popular form of impressionism, that of Detaille and BastienLepage, but also generally expressed admiration for the radical impressionism of Monet. The former brand of naturalism seemed to represent a mindless recording of an accepted material reality, while the
latter, to its credit, embodied a strong subjective factor.37 Impressionist
subjectivity, however, did not lead to great art; it was undisciplined,
overly personal, and expressed no universal truths. "The essential goal
of our art," the symbolist Gustave Kahn wrote in 1886, "is to objectify the
subjective (the exteriorization of the Idea) instead of subjectifying the
35. Alfred de Lostalot, "Exposition des oeuvres de M. Claude Monet," Gazette des
beaux-arts27 (April 1883): 344.
36. Emile Zola, "M. H. Taine, Artiste" (1866), and "Proudhon et Courbet" (1866), in
Mes haines, mon salon, Edouard Manet (Paris, 1907), pp. 225, 25.
37. Albert Aurier, for example, praised Monet but did not place him on the level of
the "Idea" painters; see his "Claude Monet" (March 1892), in Oeuvresposthumes, p. 225.
788
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cezanne
objective (nature seen through a temperament)."38 The subjective side of

impressionism, the role of the temperament recognized by the symbolists, was of great significance for Cezanne.
To understand this significance we must refer once again to the
connection so often made between Cezanne and Poussin. As I have
already said, in 1905 Denis called Cezanne the "Poussin of the still life
and landscape." But Denis was not the first publicly to associate the
modern master with the classical one. Earlier in the same year Charles
Camoin, a painter who had first met Cezanne during military service in
Aix in 1901, had answered a Mercurede France questionnaire on modern
art by stressing Cezanne's seminal importance, his role as the "Primitive
of outdoor painting," his apparent classicism, and his concern for "bringing Poussin back to life through nature [vivifier Poussin sur nature]."39
Camoin illuminated this cryptic phrase to some extent as he quoted
excerpts from letters which Cezanne had written him during the preceding three and a half years. The word "vivifier" appeared in a sentence
taken from a letter of 1903; Cezanne had written: "Go to the Louvre, but
after having seen the Masters who rest there, it is necessary to hasten to
go out and revive in oneself, through contact with nature, the instincts,
the sensations of art which reside within us." Camoin also quoted other
passages which advised making studies after the baroque masters, as if
after nature, and which argued that the method of another artist should
not alter one's own sensation.40 In other words, Cezanne had told Camoin to study the masters for solutions to technical problems but, above
all, to retain his individuality through a personal contact with nature. If
Poussin's style or subject matter was to be revived, it was to be revived in
a new form in accordance with the expression of the personal sensation
of the artist. Cezanne repeatedly gave the same advice to his younger
admirers: "go out and study nature"; "let us seek to express ourselves
according to our personal temperament"; "you will find through nature
the techniquesemployed by the four or five masters of Venice" (Cezanne's
emphasis).41 C zanne was not very discriminatory in his choice of "old
38. Gustave Kahn, "Reponse des symbolistes," L'Ev'n ment, 28 September 1886,
quoted in Sven Loevgren, The Genesisof Modernism(Bloomington, Ind., 1971), pp. 83-84.
39. See Camoin's statement quoted by Charles Morice in "Enquete sur les tendences
actuelles des arts plastiques," Mercurede France 56 (1 August 1905): 353-54. Theodore Reff
("Cezanne and Poussin,"Journal of the Warburgand CourtauldInstitutes 23 [1960]: 150-74)
studied the Cezanne-Poussin relationship in detail but mentioned neither the Camoin
statement nor several other earlier published accounts specifically linking Cezanne to Poussin. Reff noted his omission of the Camoin document in a later article ("Cezanne et
Poussin,"Art deFrance 3 [1963]: 302) but did not alter his original argument. He concludes,
in the first article, that Cezanne admired Poussin, as he admired the other old masters, for
his general technical procedure (p. 161).
40. Morice, p. 354. The quotations are actually from Cezanne's letters to Camoin,
13 September 1903, 3 February 1902, and 22 February 1903, pp. 255, 246, 253.
41. Cezanne to Bernard, 23 December 1904 and (not precisely dated) 1905, pp. 269,
275. I have translated "moyens" as "techniques"; for the justification, see below in text.
Critical Inquiry
Summer1978
789
masters": sometimes he referred in general to "the Venetians," sometimes more specifically to Veronese or Tintoretto, sometimes also to
Rubens; and, we may assume on the evidence of Camoin's statement,
occasionally he referred to Poussin. Nearly any "old master" might do.
But Cezanne was far more insistent about his ultimate reliance upon
nature. His was essentially an impressionist solution to the problem of
relating an expressive style to immediate, personal sensation. Significantly, when his pupil Camoin was asked whether the modern artist
should follow nature (like an impressionist) or follow his inner abstract
thought (like a symbolist), he replied: "I look for all in the study of
nature.'"42
The word "sensation," which Cezanne used in discussing art and
nature, is a difficult one in both French and English. It refers either to
the perception of something external or to an internal emotional feeling.
For Cezanne the two were nearly inseparable. Thus, one receives sensations before nature, but sensations "reside within us."43Cezanne complicated the matter by writing that he had a "strong" sensation of nature,
and elsewhere he described the "temperament" or personality of the
artist as a "force" and as a "power in the presence of nature."44 In what
sense can sensation be "strong," and how do sensation and temperament
relate to the nature which Cezanne argued must be studied so intensely?
To answer these questions and define what amounts to Cezanne's
"theory" of art, we must examine his two most complete operational
definitions of the artist. In a letter to Louis Aurenche of 1904, he wrote:
"If the strong sensation of nature-and surely I have it-is the necessary
base of any conception of art.. . the knowledge of the means of expressing our emotion is no less essential and is not acquired except through a
long period of study."45 A year later, Cezanne wrote to Roger Marx:
"With the temperament of a painter and an ideal of art, that is to say, a
conception of nature, sufficient means of expression would have been
necessary [for me] to be intelligible to the general public and occupy a
proper rank in the history of art."46 The following general formulation
42. See Morice, pp. 349, 354.
43. Ibid., p. 354.
44. Cezanne to Louis Aurenche, 25 January 1904, to Charles Camoin, 22 February
1903, and to Emile Bernard, 23 October 1905, pp. 257, 254, 276.
45. Cezanne to Aurenche, 25 January 1904, p. 257.
46. Cezanne to Marx, 23 January 1905, pp. 273-74. Previous discussions of Cezanne's
"theory" have concentrated on his letters to Bernard, especially those of 15 April 1904 and
25 July 1904. These letters expound upon technical problems, not a general aesthetic. In
them Cezanne adopted a somewhat condescending tone, telling Bernard much that he
(and any beginning student of art) probably already knew; his description of one-point
perspective, for example, is commonplace (letter of 15 April 1904). Cezanne's technical
formulations do not differ appreciably from those of such standard theorists as Thenot,
Regnier, and Blanc and would have been accepted (in the abstract) by impressionists,
symbolists, and traditional Academics alike. The artists' definition of "sensation," although
also not unusual, is a far more useful guide to his basic attitude.
790
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cizanne
emerges from these remarks: from the temperament of the artist and his
sensation of nature comes an artistic conception or ideal; the artist then
employs some means of expression to communicate his personal artistic
statement. The temperament, what Cezanne once called the "initial
force," is intimately linked to the sensation of nature. In other words,
our temperament, our primary subjective force, our emotion, influences
our impression of nature; each individual, if true to his own direct impressions, if "naive" and "sincere," perceives nature in a unique way.47
We are coming closer to Cezanne's meaning, but we still have not
defined his terms. It is easy to interpret "means of expression"; in the
nineteenth century this always referred to technique: color, chiaroscuro,
drawing, perspective, and so forth.48 "Temperament," too, is readily
identifiable; it is the individual personality about which Zola and many
others so often spoke.49 But to define "conception of nature" and "ideal of
art," especially in Cezanne's context, seems more difficult. The artist
probably derived his notions of the "means of expression," the "temperament," the "ideal of art," and the "conception of nature" from the individualistic aesthetics of Stendhal and Baudelaire, both of whose works he had
read and perhaps also discussed with Zola.5o For a general definition of
these terms by one of Cezanne's contemporaries we can turn to the theoretical writings of the poet Sully-Prudhomme. I referred above to his
belief that awkwardness is often preferable to refinement. His own arguments nonetheless are unusually clear and instructive and, although there
is no evidence that Cezanne knew his work either directly or indirectly,
Sully-Prudhomme's statements provide us with an easy access to Cezanne's convoluted terminology.
First, Sully-Prudhomme tells us how a sensation of nature can be
"strong." He defined the "impression" as a positivist would, as the immediate interaction between a being and the outside world; but the
result of this interaction, the perceived sensation, varies for each individual according to his own "nervous power" or, as we might say today,
according to his psychological
state.51 The sensation is thus
have
a
sensation, others a weak. Like
strong
personalized-some might
Cezanne, Sully-Prudhomme related temperament to sensation. He
wrote that the same image formed on the retinas of two artists would not
be seen as the same because the two men have different temperaments;
47. On naivete and sincerity, see pt. 1 of my diss.
48. See, e.g., Charles Blanc, Grammairedes arts du dessin, 3d ed. (Paris, 1876), pp.
496-503.
49. Some theorists, however, associated "temperament" primarily with general types
of personality rather than with individual personalities. Zola and Taine differed in this
respect.
50. See Stendhal's Histoire de la peinture en Italie (Paris, 1817); and Baudelaire's "Salon
de 1846," in Curiositis esthetiques(Paris, 1946), pp. 77-197, and "L'Oeuvre et la vie d'Eugene
Delacroix," in L'Art romantique(Paris, 1885), pp. 1-44.
51. Sully-Prudhomme, 5:408.
Critical Inquiry
Summer1978
791
in other words, sensation and temperament go hand in hand and both

are personal, subjective.52 Art, then, involves an objective vision-the
impression or retinal image--but perceived in a subjective or expressive
manner. This resultant subjective vision, when externalized or made
objective again, corresponds, according to Sully-Prudhomme, to the
"ideal" of the artist; and this "ideal" is formed by the temperament. This
personal vision or ideal can be communicated when the artist finds the
appropriate technique or "means of expression.""53In sum, for both
Cezanne and Sully-Prudhomme, the artist needs the following: an artistic sense (Cezanne's "strong sensation of nature"), a temperament, an
ideal (Cezanne's "conception of nature" or "ideal of art"), and a means of
expression.54
In the course of his analysis, Sully-Prudhomme drew a very significant conclusion; art, he argued, is expressive simply in that it expresses "the temperament of the artist, his [personal] ideal."55This belief
in the validity of an individualistic art was shared by Zola, for
whom it was quintessential. Zola was the closest friend of Cezanne's
youth and early maturity, and the two apparently debated and shared
many ideas; like Zola, Cezanne repeatedly stressed his concern for the
expression of the individual temperament."5 It should be evident that in
its most distilled form, Cezanne's "theory" of art corresponds to Zola's
basic notion: art is nature seen through a temperament. Zola's extreme
concern for individuality was the source of his dispute with Hippolyte
Taine, the prominent philosopher, historian, and art theorist. Taine,
whose views were in many ways close to those of Zola, had argued that
the artist should express a general social ideal derived from the "moral
climate" or "temperament" of his society at a given moment. Zola, on the
other hand, argued that art need not express a general ideal but a
personal one.57 Zola and Cezanne both concluded that with regard to
artistic statements the expression of the individual, of his own temperament, sufficed.
52. Ibid., pp. 227-28.
53. Ibid., pp. 14-15, 33. Sully-Prudhomme's analysis of the "ideal" is similar but not
identical to Hippolyte Taine's; see Taine, Philosophiede l'art (1865-69), 2 vols. (Paris, 1893),
2:258.
54. Sully-Prudhomme, 5:12-15, 33.
55. Ibid., 29.
56. In addition to the evidence of Cezanne's letters we may cite Edmond Duranty's
fictional character Marsabiel who appeared in an article published in 1867. The character
was modeled after Cezanne and was noted for his frequent use of the word "temperament"; see Marcel Crouzet, Un Meconnu du realisme: Duranty (Paris, 1964), pp. 245-47.
Also Mary Cassatt, after meeting Cezanne in 1894, reported that the artist insisted that
everyone should have his own personal vision of nature; see A. D. Breeskin, The Graphic
Workof Mary Cassatt (New York, 1948), p. 33.
57. Taine, 2:322-24. Taine's ideal artist is so characteristic of his society that in expressing himself, he expresses the general ideal. Cf. Zola, "M. H. Taine, Artiste," pp.
224-25.
792
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cezanne
Ceizanne's concern for the direct impression of nature and for the
individual sensation and its eventual expression in painting must, of
course, have also been related to his long involvement with the major
independent impressionist artists-Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro. He exhibited with them in their first independent show held in 1874. Jules
Castagnary, who reviewed the exhibition and who was among the first to
apply the descriptive term "impressionist" to this art, criticized Cezanne's
painting as overly subjective; in fact, although he generally admired the
impressionists' work, Castagnary described all of it as subjective: "[These
artists] are 'impressionists' in the sense that they render not the landIn this
scape [itself], but the sensation produced by the landscape....
manner they leave [the world of] reality and enter into pure idealism."58
Castagnary meant that the sensation of the landscape which the impressionist painting conveyed was a personal one, reflecting, as Zola
would say, the temperament of an individual; it was a personal sensation
rather than an image corresponding to the generally accepted "objective" concept of a landscape. Castagnary went on to say that the concern
for such an individualized view of reality was not at all revolutionary;
only the technical procedure, the chosen means of expression, was new
and problematic. The critic was right; Cezanne's career provided the
testimony; Cezanne spent his life searching for the "means of expression."59
If impressionism was subjective and highly individualized, and if
Cezanne's "theory" was an impressionist one, where does this leave us
with regard to an analysis of his style? We have already seen that
although his "flatness" could be considered conceptual, it could also be
considered atmospheric, the product of impressionist concerns. What
about his gaucherie, his awkwardness, his distortion? There is an obvious answer and the symbolist theorists Aurier and Denis knew it: the
temperament causes distortion. In 1890 Aurier wrote that Zola's art of
"nature seen through a temperament" resulted in "this distortion varying according to personalities." One year later he said more on the
subject: "The aim [of impressionism] is still the imitation of material
reality, no longer perhaps with its own form, its own color, but with its
perceived form, with its perceived color; it is the translation of the instantaneous sensation, with all the distortions of a rapid subjective synthesis." Following the implications of Zola's theory, Aurier argued that
this impressionism or "realism" revealed "the essential nature of its
maker because it shows us the deformations which the object under58. Jules Castagnary, "L'Exposition du boulevard des Capucines: Les Impressionnistes" (29 April 1874), in Helene Adhemar, L'Expositionde 1874 chez Nadar (re'trospectivedocumentaire)(Paris, 1974), n.p.
59. See Cezanne to Aurenche, 25 January 1904, to Bernard, 23 October 1905, and to
his son, 8 September 1906 and 13 October 1906, pp. 257, 277, 288, 297.
Critical Inquiry
Summer 1978
793
went" in the process of perception. Significantly, Aurier distinguished

impressionist distortion from symbolist distortion: "The artist will always
have the right to exaggerate [the pictorial elements], to attenuate them,
to distort them, not only according to his individual vision, according to
the molds of his personal subjectivity (as happens even in realist [i.e.,
Academic naturalist] art), but to exaggerate them, to distort them, according to the requirements of the Idea to be expressed."60 In other
words, Aurier distinguished distortion rooted in the expression of the
individual temperament from that which made possible the expression
of a universally significant "idea." Might not Cezanne's distortion and
gaucherie be seen in terms of the former category even more clearly
than in terms of the latter?
When Denis referred to this issue of impressionist distortion, he,
like Aurier, implied that there was a related secondary factor-the immediacy or spontaneity of the vision. Like many of the earlier critics of
impressionism, Denis suggested that the radical naturalist painters did
not reflect upon their own style; they lacked method. The impressionists'
"absence of method," he wrote in 1898, "was supposed to be an external
sign of the personal sincerity, of the temperament."'61 In other words,
the impressionist tried to work so fast in order to capture his immediate
impression and sensation that he lacked "method" or an orderly, clear
style. The impressionists and their supporters did indeed value spontaneity and defended a sketchlike finish as a sign of an immediate, naive,
and hence "true," vision.62
Can some of Cezanne's distortion be explained in terms of an immediacy of vision? The critic Gustave Geffroy seemed to think so. Geffroy, a good friend of Monet, met Cezanne through him in late 1894,
and in 1895 Cezanne painted Geffroy's portrait. Geffroy wrote of
Cezanne's deep concern for the study of nature but was somewhat disturbed by distortion or gaucherie in his "unfinished" works.63 In an
essay of 1901 Geffroy gave the problem an impressionist interpretation,
arguing that it is of no consequence whether a work by Cezanne is
"finished," whether it appears totally refined and orderly. "Who will say
at what precise moment a canvas is finished?" he asked; "art does not
proceed without a certain incompleteness, because the life which it re60. Aurier, "Les Isolks: Vincent van Gogh," p. 260; and "Le Symbolisme en peinture:
Paul Gauguin," pp. 208, 211 (cf. "Les Peintres symbolistes," in Oeuvres posthumes, pp.
297-98), and p. 215.
61. Denis, "Les Arts a Rome ou la methode classique," p. 50. Denis, of course, dissociated Cezanne from the "faults" of impressionism (see p. 51 and untitled article of'
April-May 1901, in Theories, p. 56).
62. See pt. 1 of my diss.
63. Geffroy, "Histoire de I'impressionnisme" (1894), in La Vie artistique(Paris, 1894),
pp. 253-55, 257, and "Paul Cezanne," p. 219. On Cezanne's chameleonic attitude toward
Geffroy, see Rewald, Cezanne, Geffroyet Gasquet (Paris, 1960), pp. 11-26.
794
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cezanne
produces is in perpetual transformation."64 In C zanne's case, it would

be best for us to interpret "life" as the world of sensation, a world of both
external and internal immediacy.
We can make our general discussion of impressionist distortion
more concrete by considering some specific works of art. There are at
least two and perhaps three ways in which to view this distortion. First,
we can consider distortion as due to the temperament, due to the individuality and essential subjectivity of vision. Just as Zola argued that
Manet had a very personal view of the world-he
said Manet saw
"blond" and "by masses"-we might argue as impressionists that any
oddities in Cezanne's style are the direct result of an individual vision
which has not been subjected to a general, conventional conception of
reality.65 If, for example, we traveled to view Mont Sainte-Victoire and,
on the basis of our own observations, decided that Cezanne's painting of
the subject (fig. 8) is distorted, we could resolve the problem by appealing to the notion of temperament-Cetzanne perhaps actually perceived
the subject as what seems to us to be an unusually bluish landscape
broken up into unusually disjointed areas of brilliant color.
Second, we can consider distortion as due to the immediacy of the
impressionist vision. Distortions which seem to be of this type-or
perhaps seem to have been created specifically to suggest this type of
interpretation for the viewer-are extremely common in the sketchoriented naturalistic painting of the late nineteenth century.66 An early
impressionist example is found in Bazille's 1866 portrait of Edouard
Blau (fig. 9). The lack of correspondence between the left side of the
chair frame and the right could be taken as a sign of impressionist
spontaneity. The artist's immediate vision may be inaccurate, awkward,
or distorted in conventional terms, but he has remained faithful to his
first direct impression. Such an argument could be applied to nearly any
painting by Cezanne, regardless of the fact that the work may seem the
product of a long period of labor; for each successive application of
paint is itself, for the impressionist, the reflection of spontaneous sensation.67 Thus, the sketchy record of apparent shifts in contour which we
may see in Cezanne's portrait of his wife (fig. 7) reflects, for the impressionist, a continual immediacy rather than duration.68 We see
another such "spontaneous" process of delineation and coloring of form
64. Geffroy, "Salon de 1901," in La Vie artistique(Paris, 1903), p. 376. Had Geffroy
been reading Henri Bergson?
65. See Emile Zola, "Edouard Manet" (1 January 1867), in Mon salon, Manet, ecritssur
l'art, ed. Antoinette Ehrard (Paris, 1970), p. 101.
66. Examples of such distortion abound in the work of Manet and Degas and are
frequently seen in Renoir's art also.
67. On this issue, see Cezanne to Bernard, 23 October 1905, and to his son, 8 September 1906, pp. 277, 288.
68. But we could apply the Bergsonian concept of "duration," a continual flow of
consciousness rather than a succession of fixed moments.
Summer1978
Critical Inquiry
"
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FIG.8.-Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire

(c. 1904). Photo courtesy of the Detroit
Instituteof Arts, bequest of Robert H. Tannahill.
recorded in the artist's "Three Skulls" (fig. 6); in addition, the

apparent warping or incomprehensible geometric structure of the tabletop can be considered a "spontaneous" distortion analogous to that in
the Bazille portrait.
My discussionof the secondcause of distortionhas partiallysubas the result

sumedthe third.Distortionmayarise,for an impressionist,
of a searchfor the seeminglyunattainablemeansof expression.Geffroy
was,in effect,referringto thistypeof distortionwhenhe askedhowone
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FIG. 9.-Frederic Bazille,Edouard

Blau (1866). Photographby courtesyof the National
Galleryof Art, Washington,D.C.
Critical Inquiry
Summer 1978
797
could determine when a painting was "finished." How does one determine whether an image, the recording of sensation, corresponds with
an objective external norm, when life itself, the life of sensation, is an
ongoing process? There can be no doubt that Cezanne considered his
own work unfinished. Aside from his repeated references to his paintings as "studies"69and his reluctance to exhibit, he frequently referred to
his lack of realization, his unending search for the means of expression.
In 1904, for example, he wrote to Louis Aurenche:
You speak to me in your letter of my realization in art. I think I am
reaching it more and more each day, although with some difficulty. ... the knowledge of the means of expressing our emotion
is not acquired except through a long period of study.70
Shortly before his death in 1906, he wrote to his son:
Finally, I will tell you that I am becoming, as a painter, more lucid
before nature, but for me, the realization of my sensations is always
very difficult. I am not able to arrive at the intensity which unfolds
before my senses; I do not have that magnificent richness of color
which animates nature.71
So we have seen that just as Cezanne's flatness might be interpreted
in terms of atmospheric effect rather than conceptual abstraction, his
distortion or awkwardness might have its origin in the impressionist's
"sensation" rather than the symbolist's "idea." To a great extent we can
interpret Cezanne's style as either symbolist or impressionist. Which
should we choose? Since both interpretations seem to work, we need
choose only if we are concerned with how Cezanne himself would have
chosen. It is obvious whose side he was on. It is well documented that he
did not think highly of the major symbolist artists, nor of symbolist
theorizing.72
Significantly, Cezanne's major theoretical statement (which I have

analyzed in detail) appeared in a letter to Roger Marx (23 January 1905)
in specific response to that critic's remarks about his works in the Salon
d'Automne of 1904. In his review, Marx had described Cezanne as a
founder of impressionism but also, along with Odilon Redon and others
whom Marx regarded as symbolists, as part of the current avant-garde.
69. On Cezanne's "studies," see, e.g., his letters to Octave Maus, 27 November 1889
and Egisto Fabbri, 31 May 1899, pp. 214, 237. (The Tannahill "Bathers" was once
owned by Fabbri.)
70. Cezanne to Aurenche, 25 January 1904, p. 257. Cf. Cezanne to Marx, 23 January
1905, p. 273.
71. Cezanne to his son, 8 September 1906, p. 288.
72. See, e.g., Cezanne to Bernard, 15 April 1904, and 23 October 1905, pp. 260, 277.
See also Geffroy's testimony in his ClaudeMonet, sa vie, son oeuvre, 2 vols. (Paris, 1924), 2:68.
798
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cizanne
According to the critic, Cezanne, like these others, distorted forms "deliberately." Marx had argued that the modern revolutionary artist, like
CeCzanne,had made his work classic by moving from an overly refined
analytical approach (Academic impressionism) to a simplicity dear to the
old masters. Marx, like Denis, defined Cezanne's style largely in terms of
symbolism and a related primitivism and classicism. Associating Cezanne
with the avant-garde, Marx gave to him a very significant position in the
history of art: Cezanne became an important "link" in what the critic had
called an historical "chain."73Cezanne's written reply to Marx followed
the publication of the article by about a month. He humbly acknowledged the critic's honor: "In my opinion," the artist wrote, "one does not
substitute oneself for the past, one just adds a new link." He then went
on to present Marx with his own "impressionist" theory of art: with a
"temperament" and a "conception of nature" one needs only the "means
of expression" in order to communicate to the public and "occupy a
proper rank in the history of art." In reply to the critic's rather complex
symbolist-oriented analysis, Cezanne presented a very traditional naturalist and impressionist formulation.
Similarly, when the symbolist-oriented artist Emile Bernard had visited Cezanne early in 1904, he too had received a dose of impressionist
theory. Bernard wrote home to his mother: "Cezanne speaks only of
painting nature according to his personality and not according to [the
idea of] art itself. ... He professes the theories of naturalism and Impressionism."'74
We have seen that Cezanne's flatness and distortion may properly be
linked to his impressionist concerns. The artists who followed him, however, most often associated these two stylistic characteristics with a symbolist aesthetic, an aesthetic that is still very much with us. Cezanne's
"impressionism" would not appear convincing without the presence of a
third stylistic trait much more commonly associated with naturalism73. Marx, "Le Salon dAutomne," pp. 459, 462-64.
74. Bernard to his mother, 5 February 1904, printed in "Un Extraordinaire Document sur Paul Cezanne," Arts-documents,November 1954, p. 4. As is well known, Bernard's
official publications on Cezanne never alluded to any final acceptance of impressionist
theory. Reff ([ 1960], p. 153) is the only Cezanne scholar to note the Bernard letter of February 1904, and he does not seem to attach any special significance to it. It is inaccurate to assert, as does Reff, that Bernard's article on Cezanne of July 1904 is consistent with the account of the artist offered to Bernard's mother. Although Cezanne, in the published article,
is described as initially concerned with a personal vision of nature, Bernard insists that the
artist's ultimate goal is "une conception decorative" and a radical abstraction of nature;
according to Bernard, Cezanne "se differencie essentiellement de l'impressionnisme." See
Bernard, "Paul Cezanne," L'Occident6 (July 1904): 21-22, 25, 28. Publicly, Bernard insists
that Cezanne shares his own symbolist orientation; his personal observations, at least in
1904, are quite different.
Critical Inquiry
Summer 1978
799
bright atmospheric color. If we reconsider the artist's depiction of Mont

Sainte-Victoire, we need not attribute the odd color and brushwork to
his individual temperament; we can, paradoxically, attribute it to late
nineteenth-century conventions for rendering the effect of bright light.
Although in the earlier stages of impressionist naturalism many
critics may have emphasized an assumed search for scientific objectivity
on the part of the artists, subjectivity, as we have seen, was always the key
element in impressionist theory. It was this concern for temperament
and personal sensation which prevented Monet and Pissarro from
adopting the photographic style of a Meissonier or a Jean Beiraud. In the
later stages of impressionist criticism, in the 1880s and 1890s, subjectivity
was more commonly the issue--one need only read the statements of the
neo-impressionists for proof of this.75 But from the very beginnings of
their careers, the independent impressionists were conscious of the conflict between their goal of an immediate art of the individual and the
concept of art itself. To be true to one's own spontaneous impressions,
one could not use preconceived formulas, one could not be conventional; yet in order to communicate an artistic experience of some
kind, one had to use a language which would be understood by others, a
language that in fact was based on accepted conventions.76 The impressionists then, like Cezanne, had to be concerned with the "means of
expression," technical procedure, the language of artistic communication. But whatever technique was used, no matter how self-conscious it
might be, it had to appear fresh and unconventional; in order to communicate an original sensation, his own sensation, the impressionist had
to develop a technique which would seem spontaneous and yet be comprehensible.
The task was well defined. The impressionist was seeking the expression of a very specific effect, the atmospheric effect of light, that
which was regarded as the elemental sensation, the impression." This
atmospheric effect was held to be naively and spontaneously perceived
and hence the most intimately personal and subjective aspect of the
natural environment; yet it was also considered the most objectively real
phenomenon, the element of nature known most directly-it was sensed,
felt. The search for the expression of this elemental sensation led to
color; for traditionally bright color had been associated with bright at75. See, e.g., Paul Signac's basic distinction between impressionism and neo-impressionism in his D'Eugene Delacroixau neo-impressionnisme(1899), ed. Fran;oise Cachin (Paris,
1964), p. 114.
76. A symbolist, however, might argue that the expression of any "truth" is universally recognizable on a level of communication more elemental than the conventional
modes.
77. For a more detailed analysis of the concepts of "atmosphere" and "effect," consult
Albert Boime, The Academyand French Painting in the Nineteenth Century(New York, 1971),
and my diss., pts. 2 and 3.
800
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cizanne
mospheric light.78 The use of bright color, that is, unusually pure,
chromatic hue, was considered in polar opposition to the use of chiaroscuro, the use of a broad range of dark/light values within the painting. 79This view was supported by aspects of the scientific study of color
and vision and by the fact that the more chromatic pigments commonly
used (as opposed to various browns and earth colors) formed a relatively
narrow range of value. Only when white and black were added could a
full range of value be derived from these colors. But a limited range of
value, that is, a lack of full chiaroscuro, was itself advantageous for the
impressionist; for chiaroscuro was considered a conventional, labored
technique for creating an illusion of atmospheric perspective. While
bright hues might suggest spontaneity and the immediacy of the impression, chiaroscuro could not.80
There was, however, a way of using chiaroscuro values which was
not inconsistent with impressionist concerns, and we see it in Cezanne's
portrait of the mid- I 860s, "Uncle Dominic" (fig. 10). Here Cezanne used
values on a broad scale but used a limited number of them. He employed
a technique which critics were in the habit of calling "summary modeling [modelisommaire]."Individual strokes of paint are clearly visible, and
the transitions between their values are often abrupt-in other words,
the painting lacks what critics called "finish." This sketchlike brushwork
and lack of subtle chiaroscuro modeling, this unconventional, perhaps
unordered, surface suggested for the viewer that the artist was concerned
with the direct rapid rendering of his impression, his personal sensation
of nature. (Of course, unsympathetic viewers interpreted the same formal elements as a sign of haste and lack of manual skill.) Among the
painters whom the young Cezanne admired, Courbet was most often
associated with the heavy impasto of a clearly visible facture and Manet
with the relatively limited number of values and the abrupt transitions.
The critic Marx, to cite only one example, readily linked Cezanne to both
these artists.81
The style of Cezanne's maturity, however, is, as I have intimated, the
result of a concern for rendering the atmospheric effect in terms of
unusually bright hues, the "spectral" color of the impressionists.82 In the
1870s the artist worked closely with Pissarro, and both men developed a
78. This and some following generalizations are supported by detailed arguments in
pts. 2 and 3 of my diss.
79. Eugene Fromentin is perhaps of most value on this issue; see his Les Maitres
d'autrefois(Paris, 1876), pp. 236-37.
80. A very limited range of values without bright hue could also suggest the atmospheric effect but was not as directly associated with spontaneity and lack of convention.
81. On Cezanne and Courbet, see Marx, "Le Salon d'Automne," pp. 459-60, 462-63;
on Cezanne and Manet, see Marx, "Un Siecle d'art" (1900), in Etudes sur l'Ecole FranCaise(Paris, 1903), p. 35.
82. See Cezanne to Pissarro, 2 July 1876, to Bernard, 15 April 1904, undated 1905,
and 23 October 1905, and to his son, 3 August 1906, pp. 127, 259, 276, 277, 281.
Critical Inquiry
Summer 1978
801
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manner of using a brighter color, freer of chiaroscuro conventions, yet
still capable of suggesting a unity, an ordering of the pictorialsurface.83
This was a significant development, for the departure from conventional

chiaroscuro had brought with it problems of structure. The creation of a
83. Reflecting on his work with Cezanne, Pissarro on 22 November 1895 wrote of the
two artists' mutual influence. He added: "But what cannot be denied is that each one kept
the only thing that counts, his own 'sensation'! " See Camille Pissaro, Lettresa sonfils, Lucien,
ed. Rewald (Paris, 1950), p. 391.
802
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cezanne
logical illusionistic space through a continual gradation of chiaroscuro

had traditionally been conceived of as a unifying device that made the
total image comprehensible to the viewer as a picture, as a completed
"tableau."Having rejected a subtly gradated chiaroscuro as contradicting
an immediacy of vision, the impressionist sought other means of achieving a structural unity. To some extent any suggestion of the impression
could itself be considered unifying, for this immediate perception of
nature was characterized as a simple, undifferentiated totality.84 But
Pissarro and Cezanne were a bit more conservative and less abstract in
their reasoning than the positivist-oriented critics who suggested such
things. They sought unity through what became for them a convention,
a means of expression; they created an overall color harmony by mixing
as many hues as possible from a relatively limited palette. This technique
enabled them to use bright hues (and to maintain a relatively limited
range of values) while at the same time avoiding overly harsh juxtapositions of these highly chromatic colors. Pissarro's "Kitchen at Piette's,
Montfoucault," dated 1874 (fig. 11), exhibits an early and rather ex-
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the Detroit Institute of Arts, bequest of Edward E. Rothman.
84. Ernest Chesneau had ridiculed such an attitude toward the impression in L'Artet
les artistes modernesen France et en Angleterre (Paris, 1864), p. 195.
Critical Inquiry
Summer1978
803
treme use of the new method. The palette employed in this painting
consists almost exclusively of pigments resembling bright spectral
colors-ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow, red lead (a strong orangered), alizarin crimson, cobalt green, and lead white. (Minute quantities of
ivory black are also present on the surface in the darkest areas.) Despite
the highly chromatic palette, the painting appears quite "gray," for Pissarro has produced many neutralized tones by mixing blue, yellow, and
red, and small amounts of green.85 He thus achieved a very unified and
harmonious color, but one suggesting, through its relatively even value
and chromatic hue,"8 a spontaneous impression of natural light.
Cezanne's palettes of the 1870s and early 1880s seem to have been
somewhat more complex than Pissarro's, but he followed a similar
method, mixing from the relatively intense colors most of the more
neutral ones. The aim seems to have been to maximize the use of the
brighter colors which were most directly associated with the atmospheric
effect while avoiding extremes of hue contrast which might seem to
break up the desired unity of the pictorial surface. Cezanne related this
technical issue to his observation of nature when he wrote to Pissarro in
1876 from L'Estaque, a town near Marseilles: "It seems to me that the
objects [here] are defined in silhouette not only in white or black, but in
blue, in red, in brown, in violet. I may be mistaken but it seems to me to
be the antithesis of modeling."' In other words, the artist saw color,
brilliant color, not chiaroscuro.
Cezanne's "Plate of Apples" of the late 1870s (fig. 12) is a work
which resulted from the study of technical procedure which we have
been discussing. It has a harmonious close-valued surface of many different hues mixed from a relatively limited palette. Although a still life
and presumably painted indoors, it suggests, through its color, an atmospheric effect similar to that resulting from strong outdoor light.
Cezanne, like the other impressionists (but unlike the neo-impressionists), rarely distinguished between indoor and outdoor light in terms
of color. Thus, a portrait or still life may appear equal in chromatic
intensity to a landscape. What seems to have been most important was
not the specific identification of a type of color or light with a particular
85. I am indebted to Meryl Johnson at the Detroit Institute of Arts for the analytical
identification of the pigments in this Pissarro and also in the Tannahill "Bathers." Inge
Fiedler at the Art Institute of Chicago kindly identified the pigments present in Cezanne's
"The Plate of Apples" (fig. 12) and Pissarro's "The Warren at Pontoise in the Snow" (1879),
both in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. These two paintings proved to be
similar in pigment composition to their counterparts in Detroit. On the subject of pigment
composition I have received much welcome advice from Johnson and Fiedler and
also from Mary Lou White and Marigene Butler.
86. That is, the resultant color is derived from the "spectral" hues of the prism or
rainbow, associated with natural light, and is "pure"; nonspectral neutralized colors (such
as the earth colors) have been added only minimally or not at all.
87. Cezanne to Pissarro, 2 July 1876, p. 127.
804
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cezanne
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subject but the general suggestion that the color and light had in fact
been perceived spontaneously. Somewhat paradoxically, but not inconsistent with the artist's search for a means of expression, Cezanne
gave the effect of atmosphere, of immediately perceived color and light,
to images which he in fact did not observe. His studies of bathers were
apparently not painted from life but from drawings of individual figures
(many of which were copied from works by the artists Cezanne referred
to as "masters") and from photographs.88 To form simple compositions
the artist grouped his individual figures of bathers in several standard
arrangements along with tree trunks and foliage. He constructed these
synthetic images not so much in terms of drawing but in terms of a
patchwork of brushstrokes of color. The Tannahill "Bathers" (fig. 2) is
such a composition, and the color which was employed here is similar to
that of Cezanne's earlier works. A relatively limited number of pigments
were used, and many of the more neutral colors were mixed from the
most intense primaries. The range of hue used to "model" the figures is
88. On this issue, see Gertrude Berthold, Cezanne und die alten Meister (Stuttgart,
1958); she discusses the composition of the Tannahill "Bathers" on p. 39.
Critical Inquiry
Summer1978
805
broad-blues, greens, pale yellows, oranges, and touches of red-while

the range of value is relatively narrow; we recall what Cezanne observed
at L'Estaque in 1876.
The viewer of the Tannahill "Bathers" may find its brushwork (facture) more remarkable than its color. The work exhibits a relatively uniform surface of short, distinct strokes of paint. We might compare this
very deliberate repetitious patterning to the more varied surfaces often
seen in the works of Monet and argue that Cezanne seems to have lost
the sense of immediacy. Yet Cezanne's surface was still clearly associated
with the sketch (hence, the criticism of "lack of finish") and his technique
still implied that an impressionist image was the goal.89 His more regular
patterning of brushstroke held out one advantage-it created a more
obviously unified surface. Such an impersonal stroke (figures and landscape are rendered in similar manner) emphasized the immediate atmospheric effect as the unifying element rather than suggesting the existence of a complex, highly differentiated compositional order. Cezanne
subjected all aspects of this imaginary composition of figures in a landscape to the same immediate, unifying vision.
The artist's portrait of his wife (fig. 7), a work of the late 1880s or
early 1890s, exhibits a much more loosely structured pattern of
brushstrokes, the kind of pattern which suggests the rapid execution
which we today associate with impressionism. This sketchier surface may,
however, simply reflect a less "finished" (or less reworked) painting, for
Cezanne often seems to have worked from a broadly brushed surface to a
pattern of smaller strokes.90 "Madame Cezanne" is remarkable in its
color, for the artist here has obviously extended the spectral range of the
local color, as was the custom of Monet and Renoir. He modeled a dress
which was in actuality probably blue by using a narrow range of values
but a broad range of hues-blues, greens, and various violets. Similarly,
the figure's face and hands were defined with tones of rose, pale orange,
and green. Again, Cezanne conceived his image in terms of "immediate"
color rather than "conventional" chiaroscuro.91
The artist's "Three Skulls" (fig. 6), painted sometime during the last
seven or eight years of his career when he was rapidly gaining recognition within the art world, is obviously not as bright in color as his "Bathers"
or "Madame Cezanne." Yet its color is "impressionist" in the sense
that it suggests the ubiquitous chromatic presence of natural atmo89. Signac considered Cezanne'sfacture more methodical than Monet's, but still "impressionist" ("D'Eugene Delacroix," p. 105).
90. The dramatic difference in scale in these two works is not necessarily relevant to
this issue. Many smaller works are loosely brushed, many larger ones tightly organized.
91. Later, Denis, R. P. Riviere, and J. F. Schnerb, who had all visited Cezanne's studio,
reported independently that he spoke of using hue (color) and not value (chiaroscuro). See
Denis, "Cezanne," pp. 249-51; and Riviere and Schnerb, "L'Atelier de Cezanne," La
GrandeRevue 46 (25 December 1907): 814.
806
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cezanne
spheric light. We would generally conceive of the three skulls and the
wooden table on which they rest as quite uniform in hue; but Cezanne
has characteristically given these objects a range of color which departs
radically from the local norm. The skull to the left, for example, has
been rendered with broad strokes of green, pale blue, dull yellow, pink,
and reddish violet; even its contour outlining is multicolored. More remarkably perhaps, the table top which we would assume was flat has
been rendered in various hues as if a modeled volumetric form. This
type of "atmospheric" color which seems to fail to distinguish between
the flat and the rounded was commonly employed by Cezanne; Denis, in
fact, described the background of a painting by Cezanne as a "fabric" of
color accompanying the principal motif and added that "whatever the
pretext, one finds there [a full] chromatic range."92
The Tannahill "Mont Sainte-Victoire" (fig. 8), another work of
Cezanne's last years, is perhaps the easiest to see in terms of an impressionist vision; it is a small-scale work, probably painted outdoors at
the site, with unusually bright, light-valued color and a relatively uniform pattern of sketchy brushwork carried even into the sky. It is simple
and direct in all of the ways we associate with the impressionist's elemental sensation of nature. Is it disturbing then to know that Cezanne was
probably working on his large-scale and synthetic "Large Bathers" (fig. 1)
at the same time? It should not be; for given the scale of the image and the
number of figures within it, the "Large Bathers" is itself a relatively
simple composition containing a dominant triangular motif which few
commentators have failed to notice. The very evident distortions of
figural form create repetitive rhythms of similar formal elements rather
than distinguishing one figure from another. If the forms of the figures
seem to merge with the forms of the landscape (as in the Tannahill
"Mont Sainte-Victoire" where foliage, mountain, and sky are linked),
this only enhances the unity and immediacy of the vision. The surface of
this painting, like those of earlier, smaller bather compositions, is ultimately organized in terms of a unifying patchwork of impressionist atmospheric color.93
Cezanne, then, seems to have felt free to apply his impressionist
vision to any subject, at any scale, and for any length of time. It is evident
that he (and the other independent impressionists) recognized the
essential dichotomy of an immediate vision and a communicating visual
art. What he came to value was not the externalized, objective appearance of the art work, but the sincerity of the artistic process which led to
that result-not the subject represented, but the vision experienced.
92. Denis, "Cezanne," p. 250. Riviere and Schnerb remarked upon the same
phenomenon in "L'Atelier de Cezanne," p. 814. All of the references to Cezanne's "tapestry"
effect (discussed above) also relate to this issue.
93. For a more detailed analysis of this composition of color, see my diss., pt. 4.
Critical Inquiry
Summer1978
807
What came to be expressed was the search for truth.94 For Cezanne the
search for truth led to and was conveyed by an art of the atmospheric
effect, an art of the immediate sensation of color and light.
We have been seeing Cezanne through himself and his contemporaries, but we have not yet seen him through a present-day perspective. Today we do not readily recognize his nineteenth-century language of conventions for expressing atmospheric light; yet we recognize
his painting as art. Why?
Cezanne's art, like much impressionist and symbolist art, seems to
have broken down the barrier between subject and object, between "sensation" as feeling and "sensation" as seeing. Although of concern in
earlier ages it is especially common in the twentieth century to argue that
art should do just this, that is, reveal the essential continuity of being in
the world, reveal the essential wholeness of experience. We have come to
regard the key aesthetic relationship not as that between the artist's
image and nature, nor even as that between the artist and his viewer, but
rather as that between the viewer and the object the artist created. Our
direct experience of art, art's direct effect on our consciousness, is allimportant. Modern critics have related this viewpoint, either overtly or
tacitly, to the theory of "empathy" or "expression."
"Empathy" is a term used to translate the German word "Einfiihlung," which means "feeling oneself into." The concept gained currency in the 1870s, but its sources go further back in time. The ideas
which came to be associated with empathy theory are found in idealistic
theories of "correspondence" and positivistic, physiologically oriented
theories of psychology.95 A late but historically significant statement on
the subject was provided by Wilhelm Worringer in 1908. The adherent
of the theory of empathy, he wrote, "no longer takes the esthetic [object]
as the starting-point of [his] investigations, but proceeds from the behavior of the contemplating subject."96 Empathy, then, involves the direct
relationship between viewer and object, a living, growing relationship.
Twentieth-century critics applied this aesthetic, which Worringer
labeled the "modern" one, to Cezanne. The German Julius MeierGraefe, for example, described his response to the artist's painting in
terms of an intimate, unfolding process of conscious experience. He
wrote: "There is no movement; the subject before me is a simple still life;
94. Cf. Geffroy writing on Cezanne in 1894, "Histoire de rimpressionnisme," pp.
253-54.
95. On the idealistic side, see the writings of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Humbert
de Superville; among the positivistic scientific studies are those of Hermann Helmholtz
and Wilhelm Wundt. Charles Henry and Adolph von Hildebrand drew from both types of
sources.
96. Wilhelm Worringer, Abstractionand Empathy (1908; London, 1963), p. 4.
808
Richard Shiff
Seeing Cezanne
and yet I feel something in the pupil of my eye quivering, as if set in

motion by some movement taking place in a higher dimension."" The
British critic Roger Fry also tended to think of the act of painting and its
appreciation in terms of an internalized "creative" process, a continuing
personalized experience. He called attention to distortions in Cezanne's
still lifes and figure paintings and explained them as necessary to the
working out of a formal harmony, that kind of abstract order with which
an empathetic relationship was said to hold; he described this creative,
artistic process as an "endless search.""98This sense of process, this coming into being, which one seemed to be able to experience before a
painting by Cezanne, appealed to the French phenomenologist Maurice
Merleau-Ponty. In his essay "Cezanne's Doubt," he pointed out what
others had called gaucherie-the distortions of perspective and the technical oddities, especially the multiple outlining. This indicated a lack of
finish and a lack of realization; but, Merleau-Ponty argued, Cezanne can
never finish, he is continually experiencing the world, his mind is one
with nature.99
By his own admission, Cezanne's art was incomplete, unrealized.
But how could it have been otherwise? He was a "modern" artist.
His contemporaries admired, and today we still admire, his search
for artistic expression, his search for truth. In a society which lacks
absolute standards, in a society of doubt, what more could be expected?
97. Julius Meier-Graefe, The Developmentof ModernArt, trans. Florence Simmonds and
George W. Chrystal, 2 vols. (New York, 1908), 1:267. Theories of eye movement were
often related to the general theory of empathy.
98. Roger Fry, Cizanne, A Study of His Development(New York, 1927), pp. 48-49, 60.
99. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Le Doute de Cezanne," Sens et non-sens (Paris, 1948), pp.
15-49.

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Seeing Czanne

Author(s): Richard Shiff

After a period of relative obscurity, around 1890 Cezanne's art began to

Denis compared Gauguin to Poussin, calling the former "a kind of

FIG. 1.-Paul Cezanne,LargeBathers(c. 1902-06). PhiladelphiaMuseum

result, according to Denis, of his originality and sincerity. Because the

Thefacture, or brushwork, of Cezanne's "Bathers" is characterized

Adolphe Bouguereau, The Bathers (1884). Courtesy of the Art In-

from light to dark or from one color to another is gradual; transitional

" ' "'.. ........

FIG.4.-Puvis de Chavannes,PleasantLand (1882). Yale Universit

and intellectually profound, not the product of ignorance but of mature

position--often described by his early admirers not only as "simple"

FIG.5.-Nicolas Poussin,TheBaptismof Christ(1641). Photographby courtes

FIG.6.-Paul Cezanne,TheThreeSkulls(c. 1900). Photocourtesyof the DetroitInstituteof A

': ' .:.

impression seemed most often to be a field of vibrating brilliant color

The positivist's theory implies that the impression is not to be

objective (nature seen through a temperament)."38 The subjective side of

in other words, sensation and temperament go hand in hand and both

went" in the process of perception. Significantly, Aurier distinguished

produces is in perpetual transformation."64 In C zanne's case, it would

FIG.8.-Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire

recorded in the artist's "Three Skulls" (fig. 6); in addition, the

the Bazille portrait.

My discussionof the secondcause of distortionhas partiallysubas the result

FIG. 9.-Frederic Bazille,Edouard

Significantly, Cezanne's major theoretical statement (which I have

bright atmospheric color. If we reconsider the artist's depiction of Mont

manner of using a brighter color, freer of chiaroscuro conventions, yet

still capable of suggesting a unity, an ordering of the pictorialsurface.83

This was a significant development, for the departure from conventional

logical illusionistic space through a continual gradation of chiaroscuro

FIG. 11.-Camille Pissarro, The Kitchenat Piette's,Montfoucault(1874). Photo courtesy of

broad-blues, greens, pale yellows, oranges, and touches of red-while

and yet I feel something in the pupil of my eye quivering, as if set in

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