Chapter One: Cezanne's Early Gardens: The Jas de Bouffan and Chateau Noir The artist learns to paint from the great masters; he learns to see from nature. -- Cezanne, writing to artist Emile Bernard Art historians consider Cezanne a post-Impressionist painter because he embraced the controversial art movement after its inception. Among the principal proponents of Impressionism were Monet and Renoir, Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot. Cezanne later declared his separation from the movement because he believed the Impressionists sought fleeting moments of sunlight and shadow and captured mostly ephemeral reflective lighting effects. As Cezanne's art matured, he considered Impressionist paintings anemic. He developed a style that instead sought to portray nature's structure, solidity, and strength, emphasizing its empirical geometry. In nature's shapes he saw variations of the cylinder, the cone, and the sphere. He eventually called Impressionism "the Sunday celebration of the moment," and he began to portray the permanence of nature in a bolder, more distinctive style.
"I proceed very slowly, for nature reveals herself to me in very complex form and constant progress must be made. One must express oneself with distinction and strength," he wrote.Even though Cezanne enjoyed painting en plein air, directly from nature, he needed a studio in which to finish off his outdoor studies and to paint still lifes during inclement weather. His first studio in Aix was a room provided by his father at the Jas de Bouffan. It was a convenient arrangement, considering that the large parklike garden surrounding the house was full of interesting subjects to paint.The year 1897 marked the most disturbing emotional event in Cezanne's life -- the loss of his mother. The event affected him not only psychologically but also physically, for her death forced the sale of the family's estate in order to settle a substantial inheritance the artist shared with his two younger sisters.Approaching sixty years of age, Cezanne had grown fond of the old house and its somber grounds.
He deplored the idea of suddenly pulling himself up by the roots and detaching himself from a property to which his art and life had been anchored for thirty-seven years. He was a man steeped in conservative habits, resentful of the slightest change in his surroundings, and suspicious of all new faces and modern inventions, such as gaslight and electricity.The Jas de BouffanCezanne's family home, the Jas de Bouffan, was an important early motif, particularly its eerie, mature garden of old trees and dark, formal reflecting pool. On its spacious, austere grounds Cezanne produced thirty-nine oils and seventeen watercolors. The thirty-four-acre (fourteen hectares) estate was purchased by Cezanne's father, Louis-Auguste Cezanne, in 1859, and it served as Cezanne's home until 1899, when he and his two sisters sold it to Louis Granel, an agronomic engineer. Following Granel's death, the property passed to his grandson, the late Dr. Frederic Corsy, who sold it to the city of Aix in 1994. Eventually, the city intends to open it to the public as a museum.
Today at Aix it's possible to look through the wrought-iron gates of the mysterious Jas de Bouffan and see its gloomy, ivy-covered faYade framed by an immense avenue of sycamore trees underplanted with blue irises. The three-story house has a red pantiled roof, beige walls set with tall, arched windows, and blue shutters. One painting, entitled Jas de Bouffan (1885-87), shows the mansion at the end of a sunlit lawn, a snaking garden wall leading the eye past a ProvenYal farmhouse and across the front of the main house. The farmhouse appears to stand next to the main residence, but this pr.