A History of European Art

Lecture 44: Renoir, Pissarro, and Cézanne

subtlest he ever painted. Blue-grey permeates the painting; there is very little

distinction between sky and water. The fog is given structure through the

verticals of the posts along the water’s edge, the strong smokestack on the

right side, and smaller verticals, as well as their reÀ ections in the water. It is

probably true that Pissarro never created a single great masterpiece on the

order of Renoir’s Luncheon or Monet’s greatest waterlily paintings, but he

did paint a large number of bold and beautiful paintings in his long lifetime.

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) worked closely with Pissarro in the early 1870s.

Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence. His father was a banker who owned

the largest, most historically signi¿ cant house in the area, called the Jas de

Bouffan. As a nouveau-riche father, he wanted his son to enter an exalted

profession and insisted he study law. Cézanne did so, for two years, but

was already interested in art and studied at the local drawing academy. His

closest boyhood friend was Emile Zola, the future famous novelist, who had

already moved to Paris and urged Cézanne to follow. In 1861, Cézanne’s

father ¿ nally permitted him to go to Paris, where he enrolled at the

Atelier Suisse.

As a Provençal, Cézanne was an outsider, with a thick accent and a rough

manner. It is not surprising that in spite of studying and working in Paris, he

was to spend the greater part of his life in Provence, exploring his own ideas

and following his own intense vision.

We see Cézanne’s Trees and Houses (c. 1885), probably painted in the

neighborhood of the Jas de Bouffan (“habitation of the winds”). This

handsome and ambitious picture is among several similar paintings done

at or near Cézanne’s home. The screen of trees, a pictorial device explored

here, had been used by other landscape painters, most recently Pissarro and

Corot. It is painted across the foreground and serves to organize the picture.

As mentioned earlier, Pissarro and Cézanne had worked closely in the early

1870s. We see here Red Roofs (1877), painted by Pissarro during this period.

It is particularly beautiful for the whites and warm reds of the houses and the

elaborate, skillfully designed skein of tree limbs, like tapestry threads, that

organize the surface of the picture.