The Artists Father Reading L’Événement

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The Artists Father Reading L’Événement: Paul Cezanne

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Paul Cezanne Oil Painting - The Artists Father Reading L’Événement

Keywords: Artists, Father, Reading, L’Événement

Work Overview: The Artist's Father, Reading "L'Événement" (The Artists Father Reading his Newspaper)
Cézanne, Paul
1866
oil on canvas
198.5 x 119.3 cm (78 1/8 x 46 15/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington

The portrait of Louis-Auguste Cézanne as an old, serious and dignified man reveals nothing of the artist's humiliating dependence on his father until the latter's death.

In The Artist's Father Cézanne explored his emotionally charged relationship with his banker father. Tension is particularly evident in the energetic, expressive paint handling, an exaggeration of Courbet's palette knife technique. The unyielding figure of Louis-Auguste Cézanne, the newspaper he is reading, his chair, and the room are described with obtrusively thick slabs of pigment.

The Artist's Father can be interpreted as an assertion of Cézanne's independence. During the early 1860s, Cézanne rejected the legal and banking careers advocated by his father and instead studied art, a profession his father considered grossly impractical. In this calculated composition, he seated his father precariouly near the edge of the chair and tilted the perspectival slope of the floor as though trying to tip his father out of the picture, an effect heightened by the contrast between his father's heavy legs and shoes and the delicate feet of the chair supporting him. The framed painting displayed on the back wall is a still life that Cézanne painted shortly before The Artist's Father, a statement of his artistic accomplishment. The newspaper L'Evénement refers to novelist Emile Zola, the childhood friend who championed Cézanne's bid to study art in Paris and who became art critic for the paper in 1866. Cézanne's father customarily read another journal.

This is a seemingly simple composition by Paul Cezanne, the artist best-known for his dynamic and colorful still lives. Here we see a man with his newspaper, sitting in an oversized arm chair against a dark background. He is not looking at us, but instead seems relaxed and focused on his newspaper.

The portrait is of the painter’s father, Louis-Auguste Cezanne, a banker with whom Paul Cezanne had a very tense relationship as the father never approved of his son’s chosen profession of an artist, finding it “grossly impractical”. The young Cezanne rejected his family’s calls for following in his father’s footsteps and instead took up studying art. Their relationship was never a cordial one after that. Notice how Cezanne positioned the figure precariously close to the edge of the seat, almost allowing him to tip over? And look at the extended right leg of the chair and how it’s position on the floor plane – the floor too looks tilted forward, giving the impression of the figure sliding towards the viewer. This shifted and broken equilibrium was Cezanne’s way of illustrating that very unease and tension between him and his father.

The newspaper L’Evénement refers to novelist Emile Zola, the childhood friend who championed Cezanne’s bid to study art in Paris and who became art critic for the paper in 1866, the year this painting was completed. Cezanne’s father customarily read another publication.

Paul Cezanne was a pioneer of color theory, whose works inspired many generations of artists including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Cy Twombly, Robert Motherwell, Richard Diebenkorn and others. Cezanne emphasized the importance of regarding Line, Color and Form – key aspects of painting as one, and one that the human eye sees in every situation.

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