Glossary

Émile Bernard (1868–1941)

French artist who published his memoirs of Cézanne, including their correspondence, in 1925.

 

Victor Chocquet (1821–1891)

Paris civil servant who was the first collector of Cézanne's art.

 

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877)

French artist whose rugged manner of painting—including the use of a palette knife to apply paint to his canvases—influenced Cézanne's early style.

 

Maurice Denis (1870–1943)

French artist who visited Cézanne in 1906 at his studio at Les Lauves. In 1907 Denis was the first to call Cézanne the "Master of Aix."

 

Henri Gasquet (d. 1906)

Cézanne's childhood friend and father of Joachim Gasquet.

 

Joachim Gasquet (1873–1821)

Poet and friend of Cézanne's from Aix; he was the artist's first biographer.

 

Louis Gautier (1855–1947)

Academic painter from Aix.

 

Joseph Gibert (1806–1884)

Director of the Musée d'Aix and Cézanne's first drawing teacher at the museum's school. He had been a pupil of François–Marius Granet.

 

François–Marius Granet (1775–1849)

Genre and landscape painter from Aix whose work Cézanne admired.

 

Edouard Manet (1832–1883)

French artist, whose work was controversial for its modern subject matter. His bold painting technique influenced Cézanne during his sojourns in Paris in the 1860s.

 

Antoine–Fortuné Marion (1846–1900)

One Cézanne's school friends in Aix. He went on to a distinguished career as a professor and director of the Natural History Museum in Marseille. Cézanne painted his portrait in 1866–1867 at the Jas de Bouffan.

 

Midi

Term referring to the south of France, including the region of Provence.

 

mistral

Name given to the strong wind that blows along the Mediterranean coast of France, primarily in the winter.

 

motif

A distinguishing (and often recurring) theme, subject matter, or image in a work of art.

 

Claude Monet (1840–1926)

French impressionist artist who befriended Cézanne in Paris.

 

palette knife

A tool with a spatula–like blade used for mixing paint on the palette.

 

pays d'Aix

The countryside surrounding Aix.

 

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903)

French impressionist artist who acted as Cézanne's mentor. He was pivotal in guiding Cézanne toward a command of oil painting, and toward what was to become the impressionist approach: a lighter palette, more subtle and modulated brushwork, and a passion for painting landscapes out–of–doors.

 

Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665)

French artist who worked primarily in Rome and was a chief proponent of the grand manner of painting. Cézanne studied his idealizing landscapes in the Louvre.

 

Provence

Historic region of southeastern France, situated along the Mediterranean Sea.

 

Pierre Puget (1620–1694)

A baroque sculptor who was the most famous Provençal artist during Cézanne's day. Cézanne made more than thirty drawings after works by Puget, principally those that he could study in the Louvre. Cézanne owned a plaster cast of a statuette thought at the time to have been after an original by Puget, which appears in Still Life with a Plaster Cupid, c. 1892–1895.

 

Pierre–Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)

French impressionist artist who was a good friend of Cézanne’s, visiting him several times in Provence.

 

Kerr–Xavier Roussel (1867–1944)

French artist who visited Cézanne at his Les Lauves studio in 1906 with Maurice Denis. He photographed Cézanne painting the Montagne Sainte–Victoire.

 

Saint–Marc

A small village several miles northwest of Aix.

 

Salon des Refusés

Exhibition of artists whose works were rejected by juries for the Paris Salon, the annual, state–sanctioned exhibition of contemporary art. Among the artists included in the 1863 Salon were Manet, Pissarro, and Cézanne.

 

sur le motif

French expression meaning "before the motif." It is used to describe working outdoors directly in front of the scene being rendered.

 

Le Tholonet

Village to the east of Aix in the vicinity of the Château Noir. Cézanne often went to dine there when he was painting at the Château Noir and the Bibémus quarry.

 

Antony Valabrègue (1844–1900)

Poet and childhood friend of Cézanne's from Aix. Cézanne's portrait of him from 1866, painted at the Jas de Bouffan, was described by a member of an exhibition jury as having been painted "not only with a knife, but with a pistol."

 

Ambroise Vollard (1865–1939)

Paris art dealer who championed Cézanne's work. Vollard mounted Cézanne's first solo exhibition in 1895 in Paris, bringing the artist much critical notice.

 

Émile Zola (1840–1902)

Author and critic who was Cézanne's oldest friend. Writing of the third impressionist exhibition in 1877, to which Cézanne had sent paintings of L'Estaque, he called Cézanne "without a doubt the finest colorist of the group. In the exhibition there are some extremely fine landscapes of Provence by him." Cézanne broke off relations with Zola after the latter published a novel (L'Oeuvre, 1886) that featured the character of a failed artist apparently based on Cézanne.

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