The Cultivation of French Art

Paul Cezanne, Battle of Love (c.1880) oil on canvas, 147/8” x 18 ¼”

Within my gallery, I have displayed and spoken about through this blog of many different pieces of art. However, I have not spoken much about the era of art that each of these pieces were created in, and how that reflects on the art piece itself. In the late 1800′s there was a movement from Impressionism to Post-Impressionism. The Post-Impressionist Movement was created and given its name by a man named Roger Fry. He wanted to put together an exhibition of all of the works created up to this point (not literally), in order to place those works within a specific category – the cultivation of French art – also known as The Post-Impressionist Movement. This allowed those artists working after the Impressionist Movement to become institutionalized in the academy. From this point forward Artists’ dabbled in Impressionism and then began to branch off.

In this particular painting, the Battle of Love (c. 1880), there are thick lines drawn around each figure and heavy brush strokes throughout the piece. From what we know of the artist, Paul Cezanne was the most important post-impressionist. He was a very analytical painter, and he was always clinical in his approach to create visual stimuli in his paintings. In the beginning of the Post-Impressionist Movement, Cezanne opened the doors for a new way of doing things. He would go out in the morning, paint all day, creating compositions in nature. Many of themes up to this point and before Post-Impressionism were still relevant, thus he used classical Greek and Roman-like characters to portray the battle of love in nature.

Love is a battlefield. True or false?

Paul Cezanne’s painting of the Battle of Love automatically reminds me of the correlation that can be made to the late Pat Benatar’s hit song “Love is a Battlefield.”

Nevertheless, Cezanne uses many techniques to create this vivid form of art, and thus he continues to create many more masterpieces such as The Large Bathers (1906).

Paul Cezanne, The Large Bathers (1906) oil on canvas, 6’ 10” x 8’ 2” Philadelphia Museum of Art

Cezanne once again depicts the figures here naked and bathing out in public, which is seen in much of the Greek and Roman ways of life before this time. However, it was common in 1906, for people to take their clothes off and go down to the river to wash off. We know that bathing at this time doesn’t take very long which correlates this piece of art to Japanese block prints, ukiyo-e. Cezanne is acknowledging academics in this piece, but he changes the views of human bodies because he said that times had changed and he wanted to be different and give a different representation of the humans.

Overall, these two works show humans as natural, nude forms that coincide well with that of the natural world. I like the thickness of the paint and brush work that Cezanne uses in these two works, and I really enjoy the vibrant colors. The contrasting colors work well together which add to the composition of the painting and its substance as a whole. I enjoyed looking into Cezanne’s pieces, but these two are by far my favorites. They include such brightness and vibrancy which I really like! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! Thank you for viewing and if would like please comment below for any additional observations that you have or any other material you think pertains to these two works of art!

-Gallery 9310, The Owner