The gardener vallier paul cezanne biography wikipedia

Apart from the bathers, the only figures painted by Cezanne during the last years of his life were portraits of men and women of middle age or beyond. He surrounded himself with young friends but preferred to paint people of his own generation. In he told the archaeologist Jules Borely:.

What was paul cézanne, art style

Above all, I love the look of people who have grown old without abandoning the old customs, of people who have lived their lives in accordance with the laws of time. I despise those who attempt to overcome those laws. Look at the old man who owns that cafe, sitting on his doorstep under that spindle tree. What style! And now look at the girl shop assistant.

Paul cézanne still life

Of course she is pretty, and there is nothing to say against her - but her hair and her clothes are so banal and deceitful. Cezanne liked the patina that time gave. He hated artificiality and progress. The people who were close to him and served him in his old age - and whom he trusted - were Mme Bremond, his housekeeper, and Vallier, his gardener.

Vallier sat for him several times, wearing a straw hat or a sailor's hat. He was probably working on one of these portraits, which remain unfinished, a few days before he died. On 28 September , shortly before his death, he wrote to his son: "I still see Vallier, but I am so slow at my work that it saddens me. Despite this declaration, the broad, dynamic brush strokes of this painting reveal nothing of the painter's difficulties.