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Lot Essay
Painted circa 1879 in the countryside near Paris, Chemin à l'entrée de la forêt represents a pivotal moment in Cézanne's stylistic evolution. It stands at the cusp of the artist's Impressionist works of the early 1870s, characterized by a lively palette and loose facture, and the novel "constructivist" style of his later years, with its unified tonality and systematic stroke. The constructivist brushwork that would become Cézanne's signature-- short, parallel strokes of pigment applied to the canvas in a pattern of rhythmic diagonals--is clearly evident in the present work in the rendering of the trees and sky. Additionally, the restrained, harmonious palette of greens, blues, and golden browns anticipates the landscapes of the 1880s and 1890s. However, the painting retains a freedom and spontaneity in its execution which is generally subordinated in the rigorously structured later works. Tiny areas of bare canvas are left exposed, lending a flickering, luminous vitality to the scene. The painting has the effect of an image made rapidly en plein air, reflecting the artist's sensitivity to his picturesque motif and his desire to render a visual equivalent of his sensations in front of the landscape. Even the view that Cézanne has chosen to depict -- a curving path at the entrance to a wood -- suggests a moment of transition, at once precarious and exhilarating. It is a motif that Cézanne explored once more in 1879-1880 (fig. 1), but that he otherwise painted only rarely in his career: circa 1873, for instance, at Auvers-sur-Oise (fig. 2); and in 1902-1906 near the Bibemus quarry (fig. 3). Comparison of the latter two images with the present picture provides an instructive account of Cézanne's artistic development during these decades, and suggests the pivotal evolutionary role occupied by works like Chemin à l'entrée de la forêt.
Regarding Cézanne's paintings of this period, Fritz Novotny wrote in 1938:
In some ways the works of this phase--the last part of the seventies and the time around 1880--provide a more distinct expression of the space-forming principles of Cézanne than do the works of the succeeding periods. They do so in a more remarkable, less complicated fashion. Within Cézanne's evolution, their style appears like a clearly formulated program. The main feature that derives from this is the homogeneity of the pictorial structure... Of great importance here are the evenly distributed values, the balance of the structural parts of pictorial cohesion: as far as the execution is concerned, this is seen in the closely assembled, fat, mostly rather pigment-loaded brush strokes that frequently are oriented in parallel diagonals. This even distribution of values and this balance emphatically express a lack of contrast that pervades the entire picture plane and thus also the picture space (quoted in J. Rewald, op. cit., 1996, p. 272).
The exact locale depicted in the present painting has not been identified. The photograph of the work in the Vollard archives is annotated by Cézanne's son "Melun 1880," referring to the small town outside of Paris, not far from the forest of Fontainebleau, where the artist lived from April 1879 until March 1880. Rewald identifies the painting as an autumn landscape, and therefore places its date of execution in 1879 rather than 1880. Cézanne is known to have made many trips to Paris during his year at Melun, and the present work may have been painted anywhere between the two sites. Notably, of the paintings that Rewald attributes to the Melun period, only one, Le pont de Maincy (Rewald 436), has been securely associated with a particular motif in the area. The various works are unified, however, by their common use of the constructive brushstroke, and Rewald in fact identifies the Melun pictures of 1879-1880 as the earliest landscapes to utilize this novel approach to facture (ibid., p. 291).
Although the path curving through the forest is an unusual motif for Cézanne, the image of la route tournante flanked by houses and cottages is one that fascinated the artist throughout his career, particularly during the 1870s. It appears in at least seventeen compositions executed in this decade in the area of Auvers-sur-Oise and Pontoise. Not coincidentally, the motif was also one favored by Pissarro (see lot 15), alongside whom Cézanne painted at Auvers and Pontoise both in 1874-1877 and 1879-1882. Pissarro's tutelage was instrumental in the development of Cézanne's mature style; as Roger Fry has written, "Pissarro put into his hands a technical method in which all was calculated beforehand, in which one proceeded with methodical deliberation and strict precaution, step by step, touch by touch, towards a preconceived and clearly envisaged goal... It turned him away from the inner vision and showed him the marvelous territory of external vision..." (R. Fry, Cézanne: A Study of His Development, New York, 1958, pp. 34-35). Writing to Emile Bernard about the significance of this new method, Cézanne explained:
One is neither too scrupulous, too sincere, nor too submissive before nature; but one is more or less master of his model, and above all his means of expression. One must penetrate what lies before him, and strive to express himself as logically as possible (quoted in J. Rewald, ed., Paul Cézanne, Correspondence, Paris, 1937, p. 262).
In the preface to his monograph on Cézanne, Meyer Shapiro provided a poignant description of the results of Cézanne's explorations:
The visible world is simply not represented on Cézanne's canvas. It is re-created through strokes of color among which are many that we cannot identify with an object and yet are necessary for the harmony of the whole. If his touch of pigment is a bit of nature (a tree, a fruit) and a bit of sensation (green, red), it is also an element of construction which binds sensations or objects. The whole presents itself to us on the one hand as an object-world that is colorful, varied and harmonious, and on the other hand as the minutely ordered creation of an observant, inventive mind intensely concerned with its own process . . . In this complex process . . . the self is always present, poised between sensing and knowing, or between its perceptions and a practical ordering activity (M. Shapiro, Cézanne, New York, 1962, p. 10).
The first owner of the present work was Victor Chocquet, a close friend of Cézanne and the first consistent buyer of his work, as well as an energetic champion of the Impressionists. A customs clerk of modest means, Chocquet nevertheless was able to amass a remarkable collection of paintings, drawings, furniture, silver, and porcelain during the second half of the nineteenth century, including at least thirty-five works by Cézanne. Monet described Chocquet as the only individual he had ever met "who truly loved painting with a passion," and Renoir called him "the greatest French collector since the kings, perhaps of the world since the Popes!" (quoted in J. Rewald, op. cit., 1996, p. 194). Chocquet's fierce devotion to Cézanne and his colleagues is clear from the collector's behavior at the Third Impressionist exhibition, described by Georges Rivière:
He was something to see, standing up to hostile crowds at the exhibition during the first years of Impressionism. He accosted those who laughed, making them ashamed of their unkind comments, lashing them with ironic remarks... Hardly had he left one group before he would be found, farther along, leading a reluctant connoisseur, almost by force, up to canvases by Renoir, Monet, or Cézanne, doing his utmost to make the man share his admiration for these reviled artists... He exerted himself tirelessly without ever departing from that refined courtesy that made him the most charming, and the most dangerous, adversary (quoted in A. Distel, Impressionism: The First Collectors, New York, 1990, p. 137).
Cézanne painted six portraits of Chocquet between their first meeting in 1875 and the collector's death in 1891 (Rewald 292, 296, 297, 460, 461, 671; fig. 4). Chocquet's collection of works by Cézanne, including the six portraits as well as the present painting, hung on the collector's walls until the end of his life; thereafter, they were dispersed at a series of public auctions at Galerie Georges Petit.
(fig. 1) Paul Cézanne, Les peupliers, 1879-1880, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
(fig. 2) Paul Cézanne, La route tournante en sous-bois, circa 1873, Location unknown.
(fig. 3) Paul Cézanne, La route tournante en sous-bois, 1902-1906, Location unknown
(fig. 4) Paul Cézanne, Portrait de Victor Chocquet assis, 1877, Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio
Regarding Cézanne's paintings of this period, Fritz Novotny wrote in 1938:
In some ways the works of this phase--the last part of the seventies and the time around 1880--provide a more distinct expression of the space-forming principles of Cézanne than do the works of the succeeding periods. They do so in a more remarkable, less complicated fashion. Within Cézanne's evolution, their style appears like a clearly formulated program. The main feature that derives from this is the homogeneity of the pictorial structure... Of great importance here are the evenly distributed values, the balance of the structural parts of pictorial cohesion: as far as the execution is concerned, this is seen in the closely assembled, fat, mostly rather pigment-loaded brush strokes that frequently are oriented in parallel diagonals. This even distribution of values and this balance emphatically express a lack of contrast that pervades the entire picture plane and thus also the picture space (quoted in J. Rewald, op. cit., 1996, p. 272).
The exact locale depicted in the present painting has not been identified. The photograph of the work in the Vollard archives is annotated by Cézanne's son "Melun 1880," referring to the small town outside of Paris, not far from the forest of Fontainebleau, where the artist lived from April 1879 until March 1880. Rewald identifies the painting as an autumn landscape, and therefore places its date of execution in 1879 rather than 1880. Cézanne is known to have made many trips to Paris during his year at Melun, and the present work may have been painted anywhere between the two sites. Notably, of the paintings that Rewald attributes to the Melun period, only one, Le pont de Maincy (Rewald 436), has been securely associated with a particular motif in the area. The various works are unified, however, by their common use of the constructive brushstroke, and Rewald in fact identifies the Melun pictures of 1879-1880 as the earliest landscapes to utilize this novel approach to facture (ibid., p. 291).
Although the path curving through the forest is an unusual motif for Cézanne, the image of la route tournante flanked by houses and cottages is one that fascinated the artist throughout his career, particularly during the 1870s. It appears in at least seventeen compositions executed in this decade in the area of Auvers-sur-Oise and Pontoise. Not coincidentally, the motif was also one favored by Pissarro (see lot 15), alongside whom Cézanne painted at Auvers and Pontoise both in 1874-1877 and 1879-1882. Pissarro's tutelage was instrumental in the development of Cézanne's mature style; as Roger Fry has written, "Pissarro put into his hands a technical method in which all was calculated beforehand, in which one proceeded with methodical deliberation and strict precaution, step by step, touch by touch, towards a preconceived and clearly envisaged goal... It turned him away from the inner vision and showed him the marvelous territory of external vision..." (R. Fry, Cézanne: A Study of His Development, New York, 1958, pp. 34-35). Writing to Emile Bernard about the significance of this new method, Cézanne explained:
One is neither too scrupulous, too sincere, nor too submissive before nature; but one is more or less master of his model, and above all his means of expression. One must penetrate what lies before him, and strive to express himself as logically as possible (quoted in J. Rewald, ed., Paul Cézanne, Correspondence, Paris, 1937, p. 262).
In the preface to his monograph on Cézanne, Meyer Shapiro provided a poignant description of the results of Cézanne's explorations:
The visible world is simply not represented on Cézanne's canvas. It is re-created through strokes of color among which are many that we cannot identify with an object and yet are necessary for the harmony of the whole. If his touch of pigment is a bit of nature (a tree, a fruit) and a bit of sensation (green, red), it is also an element of construction which binds sensations or objects. The whole presents itself to us on the one hand as an object-world that is colorful, varied and harmonious, and on the other hand as the minutely ordered creation of an observant, inventive mind intensely concerned with its own process . . . In this complex process . . . the self is always present, poised between sensing and knowing, or between its perceptions and a practical ordering activity (M. Shapiro, Cézanne, New York, 1962, p. 10).
The first owner of the present work was Victor Chocquet, a close friend of Cézanne and the first consistent buyer of his work, as well as an energetic champion of the Impressionists. A customs clerk of modest means, Chocquet nevertheless was able to amass a remarkable collection of paintings, drawings, furniture, silver, and porcelain during the second half of the nineteenth century, including at least thirty-five works by Cézanne. Monet described Chocquet as the only individual he had ever met "who truly loved painting with a passion," and Renoir called him "the greatest French collector since the kings, perhaps of the world since the Popes!" (quoted in J. Rewald, op. cit., 1996, p. 194). Chocquet's fierce devotion to Cézanne and his colleagues is clear from the collector's behavior at the Third Impressionist exhibition, described by Georges Rivière:
He was something to see, standing up to hostile crowds at the exhibition during the first years of Impressionism. He accosted those who laughed, making them ashamed of their unkind comments, lashing them with ironic remarks... Hardly had he left one group before he would be found, farther along, leading a reluctant connoisseur, almost by force, up to canvases by Renoir, Monet, or Cézanne, doing his utmost to make the man share his admiration for these reviled artists... He exerted himself tirelessly without ever departing from that refined courtesy that made him the most charming, and the most dangerous, adversary (quoted in A. Distel, Impressionism: The First Collectors, New York, 1990, p. 137).
Cézanne painted six portraits of Chocquet between their first meeting in 1875 and the collector's death in 1891 (Rewald 292, 296, 297, 460, 461, 671; fig. 4). Chocquet's collection of works by Cézanne, including the six portraits as well as the present painting, hung on the collector's walls until the end of his life; thereafter, they were dispersed at a series of public auctions at Galerie Georges Petit.
(fig. 1) Paul Cézanne, Les peupliers, 1879-1880, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
(fig. 2) Paul Cézanne, La route tournante en sous-bois, circa 1873, Location unknown.
(fig. 3) Paul Cézanne, La route tournante en sous-bois, 1902-1906, Location unknown
(fig. 4) Paul Cézanne, Portrait de Victor Chocquet assis, 1877, Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio