April 6, 2025 • 51 mins
Why is 2025 being called Cézanne Year in France? In this episode of the Join Us in France Travel Podcast, titled Celebrating Cézanne in 2025: A Journey Through His Art and Legacy, host Annie Sargent is joined by art historian and tour guide Elyse Rivin to explore the life, work, and influence of Paul Cézanne.
Get the podcast ad-free
Cézanne was born and died in Aix-en-Provence, and his art is deeply connected to the region. In 2025, the city will host a major exhibit at the Musée Granet, featuring over 50 works by the painter. Even more exciting, Cézanne’s long-closed family estate, Jas de Bouffan, is reopening as a cultural center. This makes 2025 the perfect time for art lovers to plan a visit to Provence.
Annie and Elyse dig into Cézanne’s personal life, his close friendship with Émile Zola, and his unique artistic vision. He wasn’t quite an Impressionist, and he wasn’t fully modernist either—he created something in between. They also talk about his obsessions with still life painting, especially apples, and his many views of Mont Sainte-Victoire.
This episode is a great listen if you’re planning a trip to the South of France, are curious about art history, or want to understand why Cézanne matters so much.
Subscribe to the Join Us in France Travel Podcast for more cultural deep dives, destination guides, and practical travel tips. New episodes every week.
Perfect for fans of Provence, French art, museums, and Cézanne's legacy. Whether you're visiting Aix-en-Provence or just love learning about France, this episode will give you a fresh perspective on a painter who changed the art world forever.
More episodes about French culture
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
This is Join Us in France,episode 540, cinq-cent-quarante.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring you a conversation withElyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks
about the legendary artist, Paul Cézanne.
(00:38):
We delve into the reasons why 2025is being celebrated as Cézanne's
year, the upcoming major exhibits inhis honor, and the intriguing life
story of this misunderstood genius.
If you're an art lover or simplycurious about the man behind the
famous still lifes and landscapes,you won't want to miss this episode.
(01:02):
This podcast is supported by donorsand listeners who buy my tours and
services, including my ItineraryConsult Service, my GPS self-guided
tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app,or take a day trip with me around the
Southwest of France in my electric car.
You can browse all of that at myboutique: JoinUsinFrance.com/boutique.
(01:25):
And remember, Patreon supporters get thepodcast ad-free as soon as it's ready.
Click on the link in the shownotes to enjoy this Patreon reward
for as little as $3 per month.
For the magazine part of the podcast,after my chat with Elyse today, I'll
discuss a question that has come upa lot recently and that most of the
people I interact with during itineraryconsultations and such, ask in one form
or another (01:50):
How are the French feeling about American tourists these days?
Bonjour, Elyse.
Bonjour, Annie.
We are going to talk about aman today, a man who painted a
(02:13):
lot, Mr. Cézanne, Paul Cézanne.
Yes, yes.
This year is Cézanne's year, that's oneof the reasons why we wanted to talk about
him, is because in Aix-en-Provence, wherehe's from, they are doing a lot of events,
to celebrate his life and his work.
So you'll tell us all about that as well.
(02:33):
But if you're going to be coming toAix-en-Provence, you need to know
about this because you'll need toreserve your ticket to go see that.
Yes, absolutely.
And lots of people do go to Aix, ofcourse, as part of their visit to
Provence, and if you are interestedin seeing a very big exhibit of
painting, which includes, I think theysaid over 56 works by Cézanne, just
(02:57):
know that you will have to reserve.
It will be in the Musée Granet,which is the big fine arts museum,
if you want to call it big, forAix it's big, in the center of
Aix, right off the Cours Mirabeau.
And the dates for beginningof reserving will open soon.
It hasn't yet opened, butjust be aware of that.
Put it in your calendar,because it will be a big event.
(03:19):
What are the dates?
When does the exhibit start?
The exhibit starts the 28th of June,so it will be late, but it goes
through into the 12th of October,which means all summer long.
They're really gearing it to thetourist season, and of course, it's
a big, big season in the Aix area.
It's also the major event that has ledthem to do this, because at first I was
(03:42):
thinking, "Hmm, this is not the year hewas born. This is not the year he died.
So what's so special about this year?"
Well, it turns out that it's because thefamily home, which was this magnificent
country kind of mansion, southern,typical Provencal beautiful home that
you... you can... you've probably seenin other places, on this huge estate,
(04:02):
it's called The Jas du Bouffan, andit's several kilometers outside of Aix.
Of course, I'm sure at the time, it wasa lot more farther out than it is today.
But it was closed for years, andis in the process of being reopened
as a cultural center and an artcenter centered around Cézanne.
And so the event is the opening of partof it, because not all of it, it hasn't
(04:26):
actually been completely finished, butthis is the reason why they decided
to declare this Cézanne year in Aix.
So, this is not the same as thesmall work place that we've been
able to visit for a long time?
No, that actually is the second studiothat in the course of his life, he
(04:47):
bought that studio, that house with thatstudio that, of course, you have visited
and I have visited, quite a few times.
At the end after, in fact it's part ofthe history of his life and his work,
but he sold The Jas du Bouffan, whenhis mother died, which was in 1899.
He was already a relatively old man.
His mother was very old at the time,and he bought this other small house
(05:12):
and turned that into the studio,and that's the one that we've been
able to visit all of these years.
Now, I don't know, obviouslysomebody bought the property or
the city of Aix had bought up theproperty of The Jas du Bouffan.
I don't know what it was being usedfor all of these years, but now it
is the property of Aix-en-Provence.
(05:32):
So that is why they're going to turnit into a really big... it sounds
like it's going to be very excitingwhen it's finished, because it will
be a space that shows his studio,that also is an exhibit space for
some of his work and has ateliers andthere will be interactive activities.
It's turning into a big, big deal.
So, not that Aix-en-Provence needs to havemore tourists, but this will be a lot of
(05:53):
fun, and it will certainly be wonderfulfor those people who like his work and
are interested in seeing the point of viewfrom which he did a lot of his painting.
Okay, fantastic.
All right.
So now tell us about Cézanne as a person.
I don't know how you want toorganize this, you want to start
with his life or his work, or...?
(06:13):
Well, I thought I'd just start witha little bit of an introduction, but
now here's my question for you, Annie.
I know that this isn't necessarilythe field that you know the most
in, but if I say to you "PaulCézanne," is there a painting or
an image that comes to your mind?
Yes.
An image of men sitting around atable, I think they're playing cards.
(06:37):
Very good.
Okay.
Oh, that's not the one I thought you weregoing to say, but there you go, okay.
So in fact, before we actually talkabout the details of his life, which
are really quite interesting, his work,he was indeed very, very prolific.
He was rather obsessive and very prolific.
But his work can actually bedivided into several categories.
(06:58):
He wasn't, in a sense, all overthe place, and he wasn't an artist
that did only one kind of thing,but actually, the categories
are... These are the categories.
He painted, of course, lotsand lots of still lifes.
His famous apples, which I willtalk about, because that's one of
the things that I actually love.
He did a lot of portraits, andhis wife, Hortense, was painted
(07:19):
45 times, if you can imagine that.
He painted his son.
He painted other peoplethat were his friends.
So first, of course, we havethe apple still life paintings.
Those are one of the biggest categories.
And then you have the portraitpaintings, and then you have the
landscapes where he did, of course,Mont Sainte-Victoire, and he did also
L'estaque and everything connectedto the south around Aix-en-Provence.
(07:42):
And he did The Card Players.
And those are some of the most famous.
They're also, ironically, to my greatsurprise, I was looking this up at the
end of the day yesterday, you know,like many of the artists that were
alive at that time, the impressionistsand the post-impressionists,
many of them, they became reallyfamous, of course, after they died.
And of course, their work becamevery valuable after they died.
(08:06):
And in 2011, one of the cardplayers was bought by a Qatari
princess for $250 million.
And in 2011, that was the mostexpensive painting ever sold.
It has been, there have been othersthat have been sold for more since
(08:28):
then, and almost all of them boughtby somebody from Qatar, unfortunately
or fortunately, because apparentlywhat they are doing is they're making
a collection that will eventually be,hopefully, a museum open to the public.
But it's kind of ironic, that itis one of the card players that
was chosen to be honored by beingbought for that amount of money.
(08:49):
So you have the still lifes, youhave the portraits, you have the card
players, you have the landscapes.
And at the very end of his life, hedid a small collection of paintings
that were group painting, were almosta reference back to classical painting,
Manet and then people from before.
And those were, in fact, some of thepaintings that, among others, inspired
(09:11):
Picasso, who considered that Cézannewas, to quote... 'The father of us all'.
He was a painter who was notunderstood, he was not the only one.
He became relatively successful andimportant at the very end of his life,
but the true value of his vision, if youwant to call it that, really came about
(09:35):
with the generation that came after him.
Yeah.
One thing that interested me, because I...I knew we were going to record this, so
I've been reading up a little bit abouthim, and it interested me that he was
raised in a wealthy family, so makingmoney was never a huge issue for him.
And his father being a banker,wanted him to be a lawyer and kind
(09:59):
of pushed him in that direction, buthe went to school with Emile Zola.
Was that... Is that right?
Yes, that's right.
So, I mean, extraordinary circumstance.
You have these two geniuses in schooltogether, and it's Emile Zola who
apparently pushed him to say, "Look,follow your artistic passion." Because
(10:20):
he was doing law school and at the sametime going to art school on the side.
And Zola, who I think is agenius, I love Zola's writing,
because he crafted such fantasticstories of Paris over the decades.
I think that's great luck that aman of wealth... He could have been
you know, sipping margaritas on thebeach or something, but he decided to
(10:44):
become obsessed with painting and withcreating something, making something.
And what he did was quite extraordinary.
I love his painting.
I have to say, you know, Ifind him very interesting.
It's easy to understandwhat's happening in his work.
Like, you see these guys playing cards.
This is something you see in real life.
(11:06):
You just see people sitting around playingcards and smoking cigarettes, you know?
It's like he took a picture, but hemade it a lot better than a picture.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, he certainly had avision that he developed.
But talking about his childhood.
So he was indeed born inAix, and he did die in Aix.
He lived basically his adultlife, he spent half the time in
(11:28):
Aix and half the time in Paris.
And in the last few years of his life,he went back to his house in, the
smaller house in Aix, and stayed there.
He basically gave up on Paris.
He felt more comfortablegoing outside and painting his
beautiful Mont Sainte-Victoire.
But he wasn't as wealthy as youthink he was, that is, his father
(11:49):
actually was... It's interesting.
His father was a businessman whoapparently managed to accumulate enough
money in a hat business that he and afriend of his opened up a private bank.
Now, I can't imagine what that's likein... Cezanne was born in 1839, so
this was basically when he was eightyears old, his father... I don't
know how you do that, to just say,"Okay, I'm going to open up a bank."
(12:11):
But anyway, so they were wealthy,but they were not super rich.
But what did happen, and of course,yes, like in a lot of other cases,
coming from a nice upper classCatholic family, his father wanted
him to follow him into the bank.
He wanted him to be alawyer or a businessman.
Cezanne started taking drawing classes.
It's interesting to note too that inthe middle of the 19th century, it
(12:34):
was not considered to be namby-pambyto want to take classes, art classes.
It was something that a lot of people did.
And so he started taking classesand developed this passion for it.
But the story about him andEmile Zola is wonderful.
Zola was a year younger than him, andthey met in the school yard of this
private, basically this private Catholicschool that they were sent to in Aix.
(12:58):
And Zola was from animmigrant Italian family.
So he was being picked on a lot.
I don't know if Zola himselfhad a strong accent or what.
But Cezanne came to his defense inthe school yard, and this is, we're
talking about maybe 9, 10 yearsolds, you know, kids that age of
maybe 10, 11, and defended him.
That is how they became friends.
(13:18):
And the story is, and I love it, is thatto thank him, Zola came to school the
next day with a basket filled with apples.
And apples became synonymous in themind and in the eyes of Cezanne with
a special object, a magical object.
You know?
I mean, all of the still lifes,he did hundreds of still life
(13:40):
paintings, sometimes with pears,sometimes with pictures and things.
But of course, the object thatwas the most important for him
were these wonderful apples.
And he's quoted as saying lateron in his life that he is going to
make apples look so incredible andso magical that everybody in Paris
is going to go, "Wow." You know?
(14:01):
That this was his objectivein life, to turn an apple into
something almost mystical.
I just love that story.
I mean, who knows if it'sexactly true like that.
But it is indeed true that he and Zolastayed close friends their entire lives.
There are actually a couple of Frenchmovies, one that was recent with an
actor, Guillaume Canet, of the episode intheir lives, which apparently was falsely
(14:26):
told, recounted again, afterwards, wherethere's a story about, they stop being
friends because Zola wrote a book calledL'Œuvre, which is a book about an artist
who is misunderstood and everything.
And for some reason, the rumor circulatedthat Cezanne was so offended by it because
he was the model for the person in thebook that they stopped being friends.
(14:46):
And it turns out to beabsolutely not true.
I have a book of their correspondence,all their lives, they wrote letters
back and forth to each other, andthey did until Zola died, he actually
died three years before Cezanne.
So it's a wonderful story and itshows the kind of loyalty he had.
Because the problem with Cezannewas that he was very solitary.
(15:06):
He was not very sociable.
What happened was, his father basicallydid not want him, of course, to
become an artist, but when he... hebasically flunked out of university.
Now whether he did thaton purpose, who knows?
You know, it could have been that he wasjust not paying attention to his classes.
He had two younger sisters,so he was the only son.
And at that point, his fatherbasically said, begrudgingly, "I'll
(15:29):
give you a very small stipend.
You go up to Paris basically for a year.
If you can figure out that, you know,you can be an artist in a year, fine.
If not, you come back here, you comeback and you start working with me."
So he went to Paris at the age of 20.
And, I can't even imagine, he wasapparently timid, and he was also very
(15:51):
uncomfortable in social situations.
But he managed, maybe through Zola,I really don't know, but he managed
to make friends with a coupleof the impressionist painters.
And the person that became the mostimportant in his life was Camille
Pissarro.... who was nine years olderthan him, but who basically became like a
(16:12):
surrogate father for him his entire life.
And Pissarro liked him, and he apparentlyfound his work somewhat interesting,
and so he took him under his wing.
He also did something which Ididn't know you had to apply to
do because not everybody got in.
He applied to be a copyist at the Louvre,and this is something where you either
(16:33):
are accepted or you're not accepted.
So for a year, he became a copyist at theLouvre and there he met Renoir, who also
became a lifelong friend, and Sisley and acouple of the other impressionist artists.
And they're all, at this point, let'ssee, Pissarro was born in 1830, so
they're all, let's say, between 20 and30 years old, you know, the whole group.
(16:54):
And of all of this group, because ofcourse there were the others, there
was Monet and eventually who he becamefriends with, but the people that he was
closest to his whole life were Pissarroand Renoir, and his son actually wound up
becoming very good friends with Renoir'sson, later on, when they were both adults.
So he did his best, he tried,but he was not getting anywhere
(17:16):
as far as he was concerned.
He couldn't sell anything...
He got rejected from theSalon several times, right?
Oh, well yes, that's alittle bit later already.
That's in 1874.
But even before then, so you couldimagine, we're talking about in
1859 he spends a year in Paris.
He goes back to Aix, he takes moreclasses interestingly enough, he takes
(17:38):
more classes, but he's determinedthat he really wants to be an artist.
And what I find interesting is thathe goes to Spain, and he's admirative
of a couple of Spanish artists.
One of them is Ribera andthe other is Zubillan.
These are artists that were,from what I call the black bleak
period of Spanish painting.
You know, this is like 18th century, 1700painters, many of the scenes are religious
(18:02):
scenes, but very dramatic with lots ofblack outline and all this kind of stuff.
And he really admires their work, and ifyou see... I have a couple of books, so if
you see a couple of his earlier paintingsbefore he really winds up opening
up with the impressionist influenceon him, they're kind of like that.
You know, they're a little bit like whatyou described with The Card Players.
(18:23):
There's a lot of black outline.
They're kind of somber.
There's not much relief in thepainting, and he winds up having
the very first exhibit of hislife, of all places, in Spain.
I'm not even sure in which city.
I don't know if it was in Madrid or not,but he actually gets an exhibit in Spain.
He goes back to Aix and then hedecides, okay, he's going to try
again and he goes back up to Paris,and thankfully, Pissarro says to him,
(18:45):
"Come with me to Auvers-sur-Oise."
This is where he was living.
This is where many of theimpressionist artists had had
houses, I don't know, for some ofthem it may have been second homes.
Renoir was from a family that hadenough money to have a second home.
And he stayed with him for a whileout there, and under the tutelage of
Pissarro and the other impressionistartists, he lightened up his palette
(19:08):
and he started painting out of doors.
And yet he never did, of course,what you see when we go to Orsay,
you know, and he's included in theimpressionist, post-impressionist,
huge section of course in Orsay.
But what you notice, of course,with his work, is that it never
has that light, fluid, airy qualityof the other impressionists.
(19:28):
But it helped him, hedid paint out of doors.
He lightened up a little bit, buthis interests were not necessarily
becoming like an impressionist,you know, fluffy clouds and pretty
flowers and stuff like that, whichof course, you know, were beautiful,
but that was not where he was going.
He started doing kind of half and half,where he said, "No, I'd like to do more
(19:52):
painting that's really about people."
He was interested in people, interestinglyenough even though he was not very
sociable, so that's when he starteddoing pictures of The Card Players,
pictures of the portraits of people,and they are of course studio paintings.
And one of the things, it's interestingwhat you just said about why you like
his painting or even The Card Players, hewasn't really interested in naturalism.
(20:13):
He was interested in an effect, he saidhe used, he wanted to use color like
light, which is very complicated to dobecause a lot of his work is very dark in
the sense that it's saturated blues, andreds, and greens, and colors like that.
There's not a lot of transparency inhis work, but he used the people that
(20:34):
he was painting like they were objects.
And he even said later on that he wantedthe models, and of course his wife,
Hortense, there's a whole lot of storiesabout their relationship, but he met her
because she was a professional model.
And when they met, he was 30.
He was already 30, so it was in1869 and she was 19, and she was
(20:56):
working as a professional model.
I think she was actually introduced tohim by Renoir, one of them, and one of
the reasons he liked her is because she,and apparently this was the reputation
she had, was that she could sit for hourswithout budging, without moving at all.
And he said, apparently at one point when,because he did so many, so many portraits
(21:19):
of her, he apparently at one point whenshe moved, you can imagine his, what kind
of personality he had, he said to her," Remember, you're a pomme, you're an apple.
You're not supposed to move.
Apples don't move."
So, you know, it's like for him,human beings were simply objects, to
paint the way he painted the apples.
And so the whole first half of his careeras an artist is really concentrated
(21:44):
on the idea of expressing what hewanted to with mostly in portraits
and in still lifes with color.
That is when of course he participatesin the huge impressionist, what
has come to be called the hugeimpressionist show of 1874, and puts...
He had three works put in and ofcourse none of them were appreciated.
The critics just descended hiswork and said, "Blah, you know,
(22:07):
whoa, what is this ugly stuff?"
There was one person who apparently,an aristocrat, who liked them enough
to buy one of them, but you know, inthe case of many of these artists, and
he's not the only one, you can't gettoo upset about being rejected because
otherwise you just give it up, you know,and you go home and you become a banker.
I mean, you know, that kind of thing.
(22:27):
But what did happen was that he startedliving with Hortense and basically they
stayed together for the rest of his life.
She outlived him by a lot.
He didn't tell his family.
And the irony of that is that his parentsdid exactly the same thing because he
was born out of wedlock, but, you know,in this very conservative family, his
parents got married well after he wasborn, but his father by this time was,
(22:51):
you know, this upper middle class banker,and God help me, you know, I can't have
a son who has an out of wedlock child.
But what happened was, his son, PaulJunior was born in 1872 and they
started living together and it wasn'tuntil several years later, that
his, it was first his mother, thatdiscovered that not only was he living
with someone, but he had a child.
(23:13):
And then basically told the father,who said okay, because by this point,
he was actually starving because hewas getting this tiny little stipend
for one person and he was supportinga whole family in this apparently
very funky little place that they wereliving in in Montmartre at the time.
And so his father accepted the ideathat he actually had a family and
(23:36):
increased his money, not to makehim wealthy at all, but enough so
that they weren't starving to death.
He was an only child himself, right?
No.
He- well he was the first.
Ah, okay.
He was the first, and then he hadtwo sisters, one who was born, I
think, two or three years afterhim, and then who was born, like,
eight years or something later.
(23:56):
And he stayed very close to oneof his sisters, and one of them,
apparently couldn't stand Hortense,so that was part of what happened
was that when he decided...
The problem with Cezanne was that hecould never stay away very long from Aix.
He was so attached to theenvironment there, to the light,
to everything that he could see.
(24:17):
So basically what happened was, in spiteof the fact that he was very attached
to this group of friends, Pissarro,Renoir and company in Paris, and even
though he was living with Hortense, hebasically decided that he was going to
spend winters in Paris, which is kind ofironic as far as I'm concerned, but he
would spend winters in Paris and summersdown in Aix, and that's what he did.
(24:42):
And since she apparently was notparticularly fond of the south, for
whatever reasons, he had an apartmentthat she lived in with their son in
Paris, and occasionally she wouldgo down south, but most of the time,
basically for the rest of their lives,they spent about a half a year together.
He would go back and forth sometimes.
(25:03):
But she was there always for him, andthey say that because he was a grumpy,
kind of solitary person, there were twoor three people who could deal with him.
Zola could deal with him, Pissarrocould deal with him, you know, a
couple of others could deal with him.
But apparently, she was the only one whocould calm him down, so that even when
(25:23):
their relationship was no longer whatwe could call an amorous relationship,
you know, he was kind of like, "Oh, youknow, she's still there," kind of thing,
he always relied on her because she knewhow to talk to him, how to soothe him.
And later on, when he was50, which takes us to what?
'89. 1889. He discovered he had diabetes.
He was already in not great health.
(25:46):
He didn't drink, so he, I don't know, Imean it just was one of those things, but
he developed a very bad case of diabetes,and so he had more and more days when he
wasn't feeling well, and she was reallythe only person that could help him.
So she, she was very important inhis life, which is not surprising,
(26:08):
in that case, not surprisingthat he did over a lifetime that
many paintings of her, you know?
She was there for him, in a sense, it'sterrible to say it, but she was like a
piece of furniture he relied on, you know?
I mean, she was always therefor him one way or the other.
So of course by the time he got to bein his late 50s, people were starting
(26:29):
to notice his work, talk about his work.
He wasn't considered to bean impressionist artist.
It's always terrible when people wantto put a label on you, you know, say,
"This is the kind of work you do.This is what you do." He alternated
between the still life work and doingoutdoor work, and then of course
he did these other pieces as well.
And it was the money that his fathermade from being a banker that enabled
(26:54):
the family to buy this estate calledThe Jas du Bouffan, which is this
magnificent, you know, typical, Provencalhouse on this huge estate, and when he
wanted to go south, he stayed there.
He stayed in the house with hisfamily, but occasionally, he wanted
Hortense and his son to come south.
And since the family couldn't standher, and she didn't like the family,
(27:17):
he wound up buying an apartment inAix-en-Provence, and so, it was one
of these complicated people, you know?
It was not like Monet who lovedhis wife and had people over for
dinner all the time, you know?
This was the kind of thing whereit was like, Hortense and the
child were on one piece of land.
The family was on another, andthat's the way it stayed pretty much
for many, many years in his life.
(27:38):
And it was starting really in his 50sthat people started buying his work.
He apparently also, it's interesting, hewas very upset, and I can understand why,
and of course that's true today, whenhe discovered that a couple of dealers
and collectors started to buy his work.
Now I, the equivalent in terms of moneytoday, I have no idea, but let's say
(27:59):
they were buying it for the equivalentof today maybe 2,000 Euros and
reselling it for 20, and he discoveredthat there was a lot of that kind of
artistic speculation going on, whichmade him very resentful and very upset.
But at the same time, he had twoor three art critics who started
to say that his work was visionary.
(28:21):
A lot of people didn't understand it,and of course part of what that is, if
you look at his landscape painting, andI have a postcard in front of me right
here on the wall, this is one of thewatercolors he did, Mont Sainte-Victoire.
One of the things that happenedwas that, I don't know if this was
a conscious kind of choice or not.
It's almost impossible to knowwhen an artist works like this.
(28:45):
He started doing work, particularly withhis landscape work, that basically broke
down the forms of what he was seeing.
And he either worked from the house, theJas du Bouffan, or he worked from a tiny
little hut in the middle of a quarry.
The quarry is called Bibémus, andthis is apparently another place
(29:05):
that is going to open up this summerthat is going to be made into a site
that you can go and visit, to see.
Because it was from this particularsite that he did the most of his work,
painting the Mont Sainte-Victoire.
But he said that he wanted to use lightto show the forms, and he was obsessed
by the forms more than anything else.
(29:25):
He said, this is a quote from him,he said he wanted to treat nature by
analyzing its forms, the cylinders, thespheres, the cones, the boxes, and he
wanted to use color as a way of showingthe vibration of the forms in the light.
And this was basically his quest, he hadwhat really was called by a critic in
(29:48):
1889, a new vision of space and color.
So if you take a look at a lot of thelandscapes, which is not the case of the
portraits and the still life paintings,what you see is as he goes towards the
last few years of his life, the worksbasically start to disintegrate in the
sense that you have a landscape that'srecognizable as a landscape, but you see
(30:12):
it in terms of the sides, the facades ofthe trees, the houses, and everything.
And this, of course, became one of thereasons why the work that came afterwards
in the early 20th century was inspired byhis work, because it was a very modern,
very analytical approach to painting.
As opposed to the impressionistswho were really trying to just show
(30:34):
natural light and natural color.
So, this is basically what happened.
In 1899, when he was 60, a very famouscollector named Ambroise Vollard, who's
very famous in terms of the whole worldof impressionist and post-impressionist
artists, had already bought a fewof his works, and he put a reserve,
(30:55):
I guess that's the way of, I don'tknow what other term to put on it.
He basically said to him, "Whateveryou don't sell by the time you
die, I'm buying it." So it was likehe put a kind of reserve thing on
it, and of course, can imagine theamount of money he made off of that
afterwards, after Cezanne actually died.
From 1899 to when he died in 1909,he lived almost all the time in Aix.
(31:19):
He basically gave up on Paris.
Paris was never a place he really liked.
He went to Paris because that's wherethe art was, that's where the collectors
were, that's where his friends were.
Zola spent most of his time, and hereally gave up on it because he was
not that interested in being thereand his obsession at the end of his
life was exclusively painting thelandscape and Mont Sainte Victoire.
(31:41):
In 1903, both Zola and Pissarrodied, interestingly enough, and
apparently it devastated him.
It was the two people that werethe closest to him his entire life.
He said that Pissarro was like a fatherto him, and of course, Zola was the only
true close friend he had his entire life.
And by the way, I don't know,it would be interesting to know
(32:03):
whether Zola had any of his work.
I have no idea.
I don't know if there's away of finding out, you know?
Whether Zola what?
Whether he had any ofhis paintings, you know?
Oh.
You know, whether he was given someof his paintings or bought them.
It would be interesting to find out.
But by this time, he was living in thelittle house that we all know of as the
studio that he has in Aix, and he wassick, and he was really not well because
(32:27):
of the diabetes and everything else.
He had enormous migraines.
Apparently, for years and years hehad terrible migraines, and his son
took very good care of him as well.
His son, who, after he died,basically opened up a gallery,
and took care of his heritage.
And then in 1906, he was out paintingMont Sainte Victoire and he was at this
(32:48):
little quarry Bibémus, got caught in ahuge storm, and apparently he fainted.
He had what they call a malaise, butapparently he was unconscious in the
rain for hours until they found him.
And they wheeled him back to his house.
I have no idea wherehis wife, Hortense, was.
By that time, by the way, theyhad gotten married in 1889.
(33:09):
They'd actually legally gottenmarried, and his wife and his son had
been a good part of his inheritance.
He was not in good health at all and theytold him to stay in bed but he refused,
and the next day he went to his studioto paint and then he fainted again, and
then it turned out that he had caughtpneumonia, and one week later he died.
(33:29):
So he died in 1906, at the age of 67.
And of course, the irony of ironies,is that immediately he was proclaimed
to be a visionary and the precursorof everything modern and new.
By this time, Picasso was alreadypainting and he was inspired specifically
(33:51):
by the work he did on landscape, anda whole bunch of other artists, the
cubists, the fauves, all of thesemovements that came at that time,
decided that Cezanne was their hero.
And in 1920, to me this is the kind ofbitter irony of things, in 1920, so he
died in 1906, in 1920, Cezanne's workwas the work that was representing
(34:14):
France at the Venice Biennale.
This is, so this is 14 years after hisdeath and they don't usually do posthumous
artists in the Venice Biennale, you know.
But by the 1920, his work recognizedas being the work of a visionary, of
a genius, and of course it followedsuit for just about every other group
that followed into the 20th century.
(34:35):
And something I didn't know, heinspired a lot of Russian artists.
And I went online to see where alot of the collection is, because
of course we know about Orsay and weknow about the work in a lot of the
places like the Metropolitan in NewYork or the Barnes collection which
is in Philadelphia, but guess whichcountry has the most work by Cezanne?
(34:58):
It's Russia.
Right, that's...
Pretty amazing when you think about it.
I mean, it just, you know, really.
So, of course, he's the quintessentialartist who was not understood
most of his life, but who had thisvision that basically inspired
so many other artists after him.
(35:19):
And I was trying to figure outyesterday after going through all of
this and reading all of this stuffand looking at my books, which are
the works that I like the most.
It's kind of interestingbecause his work is not light.
It's not happy work.
There's nothing happy,really, about his painting.
You know, a lot of the impressionists,their work is very happy to look at.
(35:39):
Well, of course I love the apples.
I love still life work, so Ifind the apples intriguing.
But I think the work I like themost is the portraits, you know.
And if you look at the portraitsof his wife, he painted her
over, and over, and over again.
Basically it's almost the samepose, you know, she's in this long
dress and sitting in this chair.
But the variation of colors, textures,and the density of the color are just
(36:03):
absolutely amazing to see, you know.
So, I don't know, if I could draw you 45times, Annie, I don't know how different
the drawings would look, you know?
You would not draw me 45 timesbecause I don't have that
kind of patience, sweetheart.
I
would have told him to getlost a long time before he had
(36:23):
the chance to paint me once.
I don't sit still that long.
Oh my goodness, can you imagine?
Sitting still for hours?
Hours.
Hours.
Because when I was looking at kind ofa lot of his paintings, what it looked
like to me was that he had painted alot of men as a matter of fact, because-
... there are painters like Degasthey only ever painted women.
(36:44):
You know, dancers, whatever.
There were lots of painters who paintedwomen typically, and he tends to paint
mostly men, I think, except for hiswife, who was very, very patient.
Except for his wife.
Bless her heart.
Perhaps he didn't want to pay alot of money for people to pose?
I don't know.
You know.
He could have worked fromphotography as a matter of fact.
(37:07):
If, I mean, he could have taken ashot of the peoples playing cards or
whatever, and worked from a photo.
That's true.
That's true, but he was not likeSeurat, the pointillist who came
afterwards who basically didin fact work from photography.
He was still interested indirect observation between the
(37:29):
human eye and what he could see.
But, what is interesting-- and you areright, I mean, he painted his son, he
painted his friends, he painted AmbroiseVollard many times, he painted...
He used his wife because shewas... she was there, you
know, and she was a good model.
But I think in all the cases, theperson is the excuse for making the
painting that is about shape andcolor and light, basically, you know?
(37:52):
Right.
And clearly, he was obsessed withsome themes, because he painted
Sainte-Victoire so many times.
And he was not the onlypainter who did this.
No.
Matisse, of course, was veryinspired by him, Picasso and Matisse.
I have a, some here.
So he did... What they know ofis that there were 900 paintings
(38:13):
left, including those in privatecollections, when he died.
That's a huge number.
That's an enormous amount.
And 400 watercolors.
He did lots and lots of watercolors.
They're absolutely beautiful.
They're just wonderful.
80 portraits, 45 or 46 of his wife thatare known, 200 still life paintings,
(38:34):
and 90 or more paintings in oil ofMont Sainte-Victoire, and then the
equivalent amount in watercolor as well.
So these were, of course,his obsessive subjects.
But he did produce a huge amount of work.
And, of course, now when you knowthat paintings sell for sums that are
(38:54):
absolutely obscene, you know, I mean, Ilive for art in a way, but $250 million
for a painting, and there are others thathave been sold for prices like that, I
mean, oh my God, it just... you know, it'sbeyond kind of comprehension in some way.
But he is really considered to be one ofthe... or the father of modern art, partly
(39:15):
because he analyzed, even intentionallyor not, he analyzed what he was looking
at in a way that was breaking it down.
And it's true, he couldhave used photography, but
apparently, he did not, you know?
He chose not to.
Right.
Right.
So he was, in a way, he was likethe charniere, how do you say that?
(39:35):
Oh, I don't know how you say that.
He was the link.
Yeah.
He was the link, really.
Between the impressionists and modernism.
That's right.
Right?
So,
he's in between.
But he's still a lot in the Orsay Museum.
Yes, because he's part of what isthe category, if you want to call it
that, of post-impressionist, okay?
(39:56):
Which of course includes Seuratand the people who did all
these little dots, you know?
I don't think he did dots.
He did shapes.
He painted the shape, gave it volume byusing different hints of color and things?
I don't know.
I-
Exactly.
Exactly.
And then in his oil and in hiswatercolors, it's even more so
because they're... What's niceabout them, and I happen to love
(40:18):
watercolor painting in general, butthere's a lot of open, airy space.
So you can see the angles, theshapes of the buildings, the trees,
the Mont Saint-Michel itself,you know, he breaks it down.
You really see the direct link betweenhim and what Picasso and a couple of
other artists developed as cubism.
They just went in a direction that I findbasically not particularly interesting
(40:41):
because it became so just analyticalbecause, Cezanne's work is beautiful.
I mean, that's the other thing.
It's like, there's beauty inall this painting, you know?
Yeah.
It's very beautiful.
It's very easy to look at.
And, okay, one detail about hispersonality that I found interesting
is that he didn't like to be touched.
Uh-huh.
(41:02):
There are a lot ofpeople like that, really.
Apparently as he got older, it got worse.
And his housekeeper, he had asked herto be very careful not... never to touch
him, and he didn't even want her coator her dress to touch him in any way.
Isn't that weird?
That's weird.
(41:22):
That's weird.
That's weird.
So, but I mean, that's just aquirky personality trait that can
get worse over time, you know?
But it makes more... Itmakes him more human.
You know, I mean, he wasn't aphallocrat like Picasso, you know?
I mean, there's lots of people who say,"I don't want to look at Picasso's work
because of his attitude towards women."
Well, I'm not... I don't believethat that's the right attitude,
(41:44):
but that's just me personally.
But Cezanne was just this grumpy,solitary human who basically had two
or three people that were importantto him, and that was it, you know?
And obviously being sick, physicallyill didn't help, you know?
Treating type 2 diabetestoday is complicated.
I can't imagine what it musthave been like back then.
(42:06):
It must have wreaked havoc on all hisorgans, you know, even if he was super
careful, they didn't have the medsthat we have today to deal with it.
No.
And that was... Like, living to 66when you have type 2 diabetes, back
then, must have been very difficult.
It's not an easy disease.
(42:27):
No.
Whether it's type 1 or type 2.
I mean, type 1, he would have been dead.
He would have been dead.
Yeah.
There's a photograph of himtaken by his son, probably just
a few months before he died.
You know, today someone who's66 doesn't look that old.
He was this... He looked so old, withthis huge white beard, and with a cane.
Okay, so he still produceda huge amount of work.
(42:50):
It's absolutely remarkable, you know?
I would love to have some applesin front of me right now, you know?
I'm just... You know.
Yes, yes.
I can't wait to go back.
Yeah.
But he also, he did peachesand he also did cherries.
Yes.
He liked fruit.
He liked fruit.
He liked the forms of fruit, you know?
But no, no oranges.
(43:12):
I don't remember seeing orangesor clementines or things.
Oh, I don't know.
Which is weird because they groweasily in that part of the country.
That's true.
But whatever.
You like the fruits you like.
It's okay.
I think I'm going to wait till Septemberto go, because I don't want to go in
July and August with a huge crush,but I am planning on spending two days
(43:34):
there with my friend from Marseille,and visiting everything again, because
I go there every single year, andkind of... this kind of pilgrimage.
But this time, it's going to be reallyfun to go out and see all these other
places that he sat in and look at MontSainte-Victoire the same way he did.
Right, and I'm in Paris as we record this,and so I will try to go to the Orsay.
(43:56):
Hopefully not all his work isalready packed up and sitting in Aix.
Hopefully, there's stillquite a bit in the Orsay.
We'll see.
I'll try it.
Oh, sure.
I'm sure there will be.
I don't think they're going toget too many paintings coming
out of Russia, but that's anotherwhole story, you know, so...
Yes.
Thank you so much, Elyse.
You're welcome, Annie.
Au revoir.
Au revoir.
(44:22):
Again, I want to thank my patrons forgiving back and supporting the show.
Patrons get several exclusiverewards for doing so.
You can see them at patreon.com/joinus.
And a special shout-out thisweek to my new Join Us in France
champion, Danielle Binenki.
(44:45):
Would you join her too?
You can do it for as, as little as $3a month, but if you can afford it, I
would love to have you pledge more so youcan have access to more of the rewards.
And to support Elyse, goto patreon.com/elysart.
I'm going to read you a couple of reviewsthat people left of my VoiceMap tours.
(45:08):
Somebody left this review of myMontmartre tour this week: "Really
nice tour, well-produced, and goodstories to make it come alive."
And a longer one about my Marais tour,someone anonymous again wrote: "I remember
our first trip to Paris which was in 2002.
Except for the cool room at the ParisHilton with a great view of the Eiffel
(45:30):
Tower at night that we were fortunateenough to be upgraded to, I thought
of Paris as just another big city.
How wrong I was!
We have been back several times sincethen, and I am so into the history
of Paris, and as well as France.
I find it totally fascinating.
We will be there in April,and we will be staying in the
(45:51):
Marais area for the second time.
If only I had known of yourwalking tours on past trips.
I've already listened to yourVoiceMap two or three times, and I
want to listen to it again and again.
I can hardly wait to get there.
We're also going to other cities,towns in France, and I'll also be
looking for other VoiceMap tours.
(46:11):
I'm so happy to have found this.
They are better than private toursthat cost 10 or 20 times more."
Well, thank you very much, Anonymous.
Yes, I do agree that a lot of VoiceMaptours are better than in-person tours.
Remember that podcast listeners geta big discount for buying these tours
from my website, and there's my newbaby called Gothic Paris as well.
(46:35):
And by Gothic, I mean the second Gothiccathedral built in the world, Notre Dame.
Now, if you buy directly fromme, it's a manual process will
take, you know, few hours.
If you need it immediately,buy from the VoiceMap app.
And if you want to read more reviews ofthese tours, go to joinusinfrance.com/vmr.
(46:57):
That stands for VoiceMap Reviews.
If you're planning a trip to Franceand you need personalized advice,
hire me as your itinerary consultant.
I can tell a lot of you are goingto be visiting France soon because
this service is very, very busy.
You may not find a time slot to talk tome as soon as you would like, so don't put
(47:17):
it off if it's your intention to do this.
Ready to start?
Visit joinusinfrance.com/boutiqueand follow the email instructions.
All right, someone recently wroteto me with this question, "How
are the French feeling aboutAmerican tourists these days?"
She and her husband are planning atrip to Paris and the Loire Valley, and
(47:39):
they are feeling a little bit nervousabout how they might be received.
And I get it.
I've been hearing this kind ofconcern more often lately, but
honestly, I really don't thinkyou have too much to worry about.
These feelings come and go.
They're cyclical.
If you've been paying attentionfor a while, you remember the whole
(48:01):
freedom fries during the Bush years.
That was a weird moment and a good exampleof how political tensions can bubble
up, but they rarely have much impact onhow regular people treat one another.
The truth is, French people aregenerally very good at separating
the people from the politics.
(48:21):
That applies to our own leadersas well, maybe especially so.
In France, we're kind of known forelecting someone, and then three
weeks later, acting like we neverliked him at all in the first place.
So if you're an American planning avisit, don't let politics stop you,
come if France is your happy place.
(48:43):
The vast majority of French peoplewill welcome you warmly, especially
if you make a little effort withthe language and basic politeness.
You know, don't forget your Mercior Bonjour or your S'il te plaît,
especially the Bonjour though.
And honestly, the French are farmore interested in how you take your
coffee or that wine you're drinking,than who your president is right now.
(49:07):
So relax, enjoy, don't overthink it.
You're very welcome here.
My thanks to podcast editorsAnne and Christian Cotovan,
who produced the transcripts.
Next week on the podcast, an episodewith Francois Senechal, the friendly
guide from Provence, who is a returnguest on the podcast, who will tell
(49:27):
us about his other love, Corsica.
We haven't talked about Corsicaall that much, and it's a part of
France that is absolutely beautiful.
He'll help us discover hiddengems, great stories, and the man
talks with a smile in his voice.
He's such a pleasure to talk to.
Thank you so much for listening,and I hope you join me next time, so
(49:48):
we can look around France together.
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent, andCopyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance.
It is released under a CreativeCommons attribution, non-commercial,
no derivatives license.
This is Join Us in France,episode 540, cinq-cent-quarante.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring you a conversation withElyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks
about the legendary artist, Paul Cézanne.
(00:38):
We delve into the reasons why 2025is being celebrated as Cézanne's
year, the upcoming major exhibits inhis honor, and the intriguing life
story of this misunderstood genius.
If you're an art lover or simplycurious about the man behind the
famous still lifes and landscapes,you won't want to miss this episode.
(01:02):
This podcast is supported by donorsand listeners who buy my tours and
services, including my ItineraryConsult Service, my GPS self-guided
tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app,or take a day trip with me around the
Southwest of France in my electric car.
You can browse all of that at myboutique: JoinUsinFrance.com/boutique.
(01:25):
And remember, Patreon supporters get thepodcast ad-free as soon as it's ready.
Click on the link in the shownotes to enjoy this Patreon reward
for as little as $3 per month.
For the magazine part of the podcast,after my chat with Elyse today, I'll
discuss a question that has come upa lot recently and that most of the
people I interact with during itineraryconsultations and such, ask in one form
or another (01:50):
How are the French feeling about American tourists these days?
Bonjour, Elyse.
Bonjour, Annie.
We are going to talk about aman today, a man who painted a
(02:13):
lot, Mr. Cézanne, Paul Cézanne.
Yes, yes.
This year is Cézanne's year, that's oneof the reasons why we wanted to talk about
him, is because in Aix-en-Provence, wherehe's from, they are doing a lot of events,
to celebrate his life and his work.
So you'll tell us all about that as well.
(02:33):
But if you're going to be coming toAix-en-Provence, you need to know
about this because you'll need toreserve your ticket to go see that.
Yes, absolutely.
And lots of people do go to Aix, ofcourse, as part of their visit to
Provence, and if you are interestedin seeing a very big exhibit of
painting, which includes, I think theysaid over 56 works by Cézanne, just
(02:57):
know that you will have to reserve.
It will be in the Musée Granet,which is the big fine arts museum,
if you want to call it big, forAix it's big, in the center of
Aix, right off the Cours Mirabeau.
And the dates for beginningof reserving will open soon.
It hasn't yet opened, butjust be aware of that.
Put it in your calendar,because it will be a big event.
(03:19):
What are the dates?
When does the exhibit start?
The exhibit starts the 28th of June,so it will be late, but it goes
through into the 12th of October,which means all summer long.
They're really gearing it to thetourist season, and of course, it's
a big, big season in the Aix area.
It's also the major event that has ledthem to do this, because at first I was
(03:42):
thinking, "Hmm, this is not the year hewas born. This is not the year he died.
So what's so special about this year?"
Well, it turns out that it's because thefamily home, which was this magnificent
country kind of mansion, southern,typical Provencal beautiful home that
you... you can... you've probably seenin other places, on this huge estate,
(04:02):
it's called The Jas du Bouffan, andit's several kilometers outside of Aix.
Of course, I'm sure at the time, it wasa lot more farther out than it is today.
But it was closed for years, andis in the process of being reopened
as a cultural center and an artcenter centered around Cézanne.
And so the event is the opening of partof it, because not all of it, it hasn't
(04:26):
actually been completely finished, butthis is the reason why they decided
to declare this Cézanne year in Aix.
So, this is not the same as thesmall work place that we've been
able to visit for a long time?
No, that actually is the second studiothat in the course of his life, he
(04:47):
bought that studio, that house with thatstudio that, of course, you have visited
and I have visited, quite a few times.
At the end after, in fact it's part ofthe history of his life and his work,
but he sold The Jas du Bouffan, whenhis mother died, which was in 1899.
He was already a relatively old man.
His mother was very old at the time,and he bought this other small house
(05:12):
and turned that into the studio,and that's the one that we've been
able to visit all of these years.
Now, I don't know, obviouslysomebody bought the property or
the city of Aix had bought up theproperty of The Jas du Bouffan.
I don't know what it was being usedfor all of these years, but now it
is the property of Aix-en-Provence.
(05:32):
So that is why they're going to turnit into a really big... it sounds
like it's going to be very excitingwhen it's finished, because it will
be a space that shows his studio,that also is an exhibit space for
some of his work and has ateliers andthere will be interactive activities.
It's turning into a big, big deal.
So, not that Aix-en-Provence needs to havemore tourists, but this will be a lot of
(05:53):
fun, and it will certainly be wonderfulfor those people who like his work and
are interested in seeing the point of viewfrom which he did a lot of his painting.
Okay, fantastic.
All right.
So now tell us about Cézanne as a person.
I don't know how you want toorganize this, you want to start
with his life or his work, or...?
(06:13):
Well, I thought I'd just start witha little bit of an introduction, but
now here's my question for you, Annie.
I know that this isn't necessarilythe field that you know the most
in, but if I say to you "PaulCézanne," is there a painting or
an image that comes to your mind?
Yes.
An image of men sitting around atable, I think they're playing cards.
(06:37):
Very good.
Okay.
Oh, that's not the one I thought you weregoing to say, but there you go, okay.
So in fact, before we actually talkabout the details of his life, which
are really quite interesting, his work,he was indeed very, very prolific.
He was rather obsessive and very prolific.
But his work can actually bedivided into several categories.
(06:58):
He wasn't, in a sense, all overthe place, and he wasn't an artist
that did only one kind of thing,but actually, the categories
are... These are the categories.
He painted, of course, lotsand lots of still lifes.
His famous apples, which I willtalk about, because that's one of
the things that I actually love.
He did a lot of portraits, andhis wife, Hortense, was painted
(07:19):
45 times, if you can imagine that.
He painted his son.
He painted other peoplethat were his friends.
So first, of course, we havethe apple still life paintings.
Those are one of the biggest categories.
And then you have the portraitpaintings, and then you have the
landscapes where he did, of course,Mont Sainte-Victoire, and he did also
L'estaque and everything connectedto the south around Aix-en-Provence.
(07:42):
And he did The Card Players.
And those are some of the most famous.
They're also, ironically, to my greatsurprise, I was looking this up at the
end of the day yesterday, you know,like many of the artists that were
alive at that time, the impressionistsand the post-impressionists,
many of them, they became reallyfamous, of course, after they died.
And of course, their work becamevery valuable after they died.
(08:06):
And in 2011, one of the cardplayers was bought by a Qatari
princess for $250 million.
And in 2011, that was the mostexpensive painting ever sold.
It has been, there have been othersthat have been sold for more since
(08:28):
then, and almost all of them boughtby somebody from Qatar, unfortunately
or fortunately, because apparentlywhat they are doing is they're making
a collection that will eventually be,hopefully, a museum open to the public.
But it's kind of ironic, that itis one of the card players that
was chosen to be honored by beingbought for that amount of money.
(08:49):
So you have the still lifes, youhave the portraits, you have the card
players, you have the landscapes.
And at the very end of his life, hedid a small collection of paintings
that were group painting, were almosta reference back to classical painting,
Manet and then people from before.
And those were, in fact, some of thepaintings that, among others, inspired
(09:11):
Picasso, who considered that Cézannewas, to quote... 'The father of us all'.
He was a painter who was notunderstood, he was not the only one.
He became relatively successful andimportant at the very end of his life,
but the true value of his vision, if youwant to call it that, really came about
(09:35):
with the generation that came after him.
Yeah.
One thing that interested me, because I...I knew we were going to record this, so
I've been reading up a little bit abouthim, and it interested me that he was
raised in a wealthy family, so makingmoney was never a huge issue for him.
And his father being a banker,wanted him to be a lawyer and kind
(09:59):
of pushed him in that direction, buthe went to school with Emile Zola.
Was that... Is that right?
Yes, that's right.
So, I mean, extraordinary circumstance.
You have these two geniuses in schooltogether, and it's Emile Zola who
apparently pushed him to say, "Look,follow your artistic passion." Because
(10:20):
he was doing law school and at the sametime going to art school on the side.
And Zola, who I think is agenius, I love Zola's writing,
because he crafted such fantasticstories of Paris over the decades.
I think that's great luck that aman of wealth... He could have been
you know, sipping margaritas on thebeach or something, but he decided to
(10:44):
become obsessed with painting and withcreating something, making something.
And what he did was quite extraordinary.
I love his painting.
I have to say, you know, Ifind him very interesting.
It's easy to understandwhat's happening in his work.
Like, you see these guys playing cards.
This is something you see in real life.
(11:06):
You just see people sitting around playingcards and smoking cigarettes, you know?
It's like he took a picture, but hemade it a lot better than a picture.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, he certainly had avision that he developed.
But talking about his childhood.
So he was indeed born inAix, and he did die in Aix.
He lived basically his adultlife, he spent half the time in
(11:28):
Aix and half the time in Paris.
And in the last few years of his life,he went back to his house in, the
smaller house in Aix, and stayed there.
He basically gave up on Paris.
He felt more comfortablegoing outside and painting his
beautiful Mont Sainte-Victoire.
But he wasn't as wealthy as youthink he was, that is, his father
(11:49):
actually was... It's interesting.
His father was a businessman whoapparently managed to accumulate enough
money in a hat business that he and afriend of his opened up a private bank.
Now, I can't imagine what that's likein... Cezanne was born in 1839, so
this was basically when he was eightyears old, his father... I don't
know how you do that, to just say,"Okay, I'm going to open up a bank."
(12:11):
But anyway, so they were wealthy,but they were not super rich.
But what did happen, and of course,yes, like in a lot of other cases,
coming from a nice upper classCatholic family, his father wanted
him to follow him into the bank.
He wanted him to be alawyer or a businessman.
Cezanne started taking drawing classes.
It's interesting to note too that inthe middle of the 19th century, it
(12:34):
was not considered to be namby-pambyto want to take classes, art classes.
It was something that a lot of people did.
And so he started taking classesand developed this passion for it.
But the story about him andEmile Zola is wonderful.
Zola was a year younger than him, andthey met in the school yard of this
private, basically this private Catholicschool that they were sent to in Aix.
(12:58):
And Zola was from animmigrant Italian family.
So he was being picked on a lot.
I don't know if Zola himselfhad a strong accent or what.
But Cezanne came to his defense inthe school yard, and this is, we're
talking about maybe 9, 10 yearsolds, you know, kids that age of
maybe 10, 11, and defended him.
That is how they became friends.
(13:18):
And the story is, and I love it, is thatto thank him, Zola came to school the
next day with a basket filled with apples.
And apples became synonymous in themind and in the eyes of Cezanne with
a special object, a magical object.
You know?
I mean, all of the still lifes,he did hundreds of still life
(13:40):
paintings, sometimes with pears,sometimes with pictures and things.
But of course, the object thatwas the most important for him
were these wonderful apples.
And he's quoted as saying lateron in his life that he is going to
make apples look so incredible andso magical that everybody in Paris
is going to go, "Wow." You know?
(14:01):
That this was his objectivein life, to turn an apple into
something almost mystical.
I just love that story.
I mean, who knows if it'sexactly true like that.
But it is indeed true that he and Zolastayed close friends their entire lives.
There are actually a couple of Frenchmovies, one that was recent with an
actor, Guillaume Canet, of the episode intheir lives, which apparently was falsely
(14:26):
told, recounted again, afterwards, wherethere's a story about, they stop being
friends because Zola wrote a book calledL'Œuvre, which is a book about an artist
who is misunderstood and everything.
And for some reason, the rumor circulatedthat Cezanne was so offended by it because
he was the model for the person in thebook that they stopped being friends.
(14:46):
And it turns out to beabsolutely not true.
I have a book of their correspondence,all their lives, they wrote letters
back and forth to each other, andthey did until Zola died, he actually
died three years before Cezanne.
So it's a wonderful story and itshows the kind of loyalty he had.
Because the problem with Cezannewas that he was very solitary.
(15:06):
He was not very sociable.
What happened was, his father basicallydid not want him, of course, to
become an artist, but when he... hebasically flunked out of university.
Now whether he did thaton purpose, who knows?
You know, it could have been that he wasjust not paying attention to his classes.
He had two younger sisters,so he was the only son.
And at that point, his fatherbasically said, begrudgingly, "I'll
(15:29):
give you a very small stipend.
You go up to Paris basically for a year.
If you can figure out that, you know,you can be an artist in a year, fine.
If not, you come back here, you comeback and you start working with me."
So he went to Paris at the age of 20.
And, I can't even imagine, he wasapparently timid, and he was also very
(15:51):
uncomfortable in social situations.
But he managed, maybe through Zola,I really don't know, but he managed
to make friends with a coupleof the impressionist painters.
And the person that became the mostimportant in his life was Camille
Pissarro.... who was nine years olderthan him, but who basically became like a
(16:12):
surrogate father for him his entire life.
And Pissarro liked him, and he apparentlyfound his work somewhat interesting,
and so he took him under his wing.
He also did something which Ididn't know you had to apply to
do because not everybody got in.
He applied to be a copyist at the Louvre,and this is something where you either
(16:33):
are accepted or you're not accepted.
So for a year, he became a copyist at theLouvre and there he met Renoir, who also
became a lifelong friend, and Sisley and acouple of the other impressionist artists.
And they're all, at this point, let'ssee, Pissarro was born in 1830, so
they're all, let's say, between 20 and30 years old, you know, the whole group.
(16:54):
And of all of this group, because ofcourse there were the others, there
was Monet and eventually who he becamefriends with, but the people that he was
closest to his whole life were Pissarroand Renoir, and his son actually wound up
becoming very good friends with Renoir'sson, later on, when they were both adults.
So he did his best, he tried,but he was not getting anywhere
(17:16):
as far as he was concerned.
He couldn't sell anything...
He got rejected from theSalon several times, right?
Oh, well yes, that's alittle bit later already.
That's in 1874.
But even before then, so you couldimagine, we're talking about in
1859 he spends a year in Paris.
He goes back to Aix, he takes moreclasses interestingly enough, he takes
(17:38):
more classes, but he's determinedthat he really wants to be an artist.
And what I find interesting is thathe goes to Spain, and he's admirative
of a couple of Spanish artists.
One of them is Ribera andthe other is Zubillan.
These are artists that were,from what I call the black bleak
period of Spanish painting.
You know, this is like 18th century, 1700painters, many of the scenes are religious
(18:02):
scenes, but very dramatic with lots ofblack outline and all this kind of stuff.
And he really admires their work, and ifyou see... I have a couple of books, so if
you see a couple of his earlier paintingsbefore he really winds up opening
up with the impressionist influenceon him, they're kind of like that.
You know, they're a little bit like whatyou described with The Card Players.
(18:23):
There's a lot of black outline.
They're kind of somber.
There's not much relief in thepainting, and he winds up having
the very first exhibit of hislife, of all places, in Spain.
I'm not even sure in which city.
I don't know if it was in Madrid or not,but he actually gets an exhibit in Spain.
He goes back to Aix and then hedecides, okay, he's going to try
again and he goes back up to Paris,and thankfully, Pissarro says to him,
(18:45):
"Come with me to Auvers-sur-Oise."
This is where he was living.
This is where many of theimpressionist artists had had
houses, I don't know, for some ofthem it may have been second homes.
Renoir was from a family that hadenough money to have a second home.
And he stayed with him for a whileout there, and under the tutelage of
Pissarro and the other impressionistartists, he lightened up his palette
(19:08):
and he started painting out of doors.
And yet he never did, of course,what you see when we go to Orsay,
you know, and he's included in theimpressionist, post-impressionist,
huge section of course in Orsay.
But what you notice, of course,with his work, is that it never
has that light, fluid, airy qualityof the other impressionists.
(19:28):
But it helped him, hedid paint out of doors.
He lightened up a little bit, buthis interests were not necessarily
becoming like an impressionist,you know, fluffy clouds and pretty
flowers and stuff like that, whichof course, you know, were beautiful,
but that was not where he was going.
He started doing kind of half and half,where he said, "No, I'd like to do more
(19:52):
painting that's really about people."
He was interested in people, interestinglyenough even though he was not very
sociable, so that's when he starteddoing pictures of The Card Players,
pictures of the portraits of people,and they are of course studio paintings.
And one of the things, it's interestingwhat you just said about why you like
his painting or even The Card Players, hewasn't really interested in naturalism.
(20:13):
He was interested in an effect, he saidhe used, he wanted to use color like
light, which is very complicated to dobecause a lot of his work is very dark in
the sense that it's saturated blues, andreds, and greens, and colors like that.
There's not a lot of transparency inhis work, but he used the people that
(20:34):
he was painting like they were objects.
And he even said later on that he wantedthe models, and of course his wife,
Hortense, there's a whole lot of storiesabout their relationship, but he met her
because she was a professional model.
And when they met, he was 30.
He was already 30, so it was in1869 and she was 19, and she was
(20:56):
working as a professional model.
I think she was actually introduced tohim by Renoir, one of them, and one of
the reasons he liked her is because she,and apparently this was the reputation
she had, was that she could sit for hourswithout budging, without moving at all.
And he said, apparently at one point when,because he did so many, so many portraits
(21:19):
of her, he apparently at one point whenshe moved, you can imagine his, what kind
of personality he had, he said to her," Remember, you're a pomme, you're an apple.
You're not supposed to move.
Apples don't move."
So, you know, it's like for him,human beings were simply objects, to
paint the way he painted the apples.
And so the whole first half of his careeras an artist is really concentrated
(21:44):
on the idea of expressing what hewanted to with mostly in portraits
and in still lifes with color.
That is when of course he participatesin the huge impressionist, what
has come to be called the hugeimpressionist show of 1874, and puts...
He had three works put in and ofcourse none of them were appreciated.
The critics just descended hiswork and said, "Blah, you know,
(22:07):
whoa, what is this ugly stuff?"
There was one person who apparently,an aristocrat, who liked them enough
to buy one of them, but you know, inthe case of many of these artists, and
he's not the only one, you can't gettoo upset about being rejected because
otherwise you just give it up, you know,and you go home and you become a banker.
I mean, you know, that kind of thing.
(22:27):
But what did happen was that he startedliving with Hortense and basically they
stayed together for the rest of his life.
She outlived him by a lot.
He didn't tell his family.
And the irony of that is that his parentsdid exactly the same thing because he
was born out of wedlock, but, you know,in this very conservative family, his
parents got married well after he wasborn, but his father by this time was,
(22:51):
you know, this upper middle class banker,and God help me, you know, I can't have
a son who has an out of wedlock child.
But what happened was, his son, PaulJunior was born in 1872 and they
started living together and it wasn'tuntil several years later, that
his, it was first his mother, thatdiscovered that not only was he living
with someone, but he had a child.
(23:13):
And then basically told the father,who said okay, because by this point,
he was actually starving because hewas getting this tiny little stipend
for one person and he was supportinga whole family in this apparently
very funky little place that they wereliving in in Montmartre at the time.
And so his father accepted the ideathat he actually had a family and
(23:36):
increased his money, not to makehim wealthy at all, but enough so
that they weren't starving to death.
He was an only child himself, right?
No.
He- well he was the first.
Ah, okay.
He was the first, and then he hadtwo sisters, one who was born, I
think, two or three years afterhim, and then who was born, like,
eight years or something later.
(23:56):
And he stayed very close to oneof his sisters, and one of them,
apparently couldn't stand Hortense,so that was part of what happened
was that when he decided...
The problem with Cezanne was that hecould never stay away very long from Aix.
He was so attached to theenvironment there, to the light,
to everything that he could see.
(24:17):
So basically what happened was, in spiteof the fact that he was very attached
to this group of friends, Pissarro,Renoir and company in Paris, and even
though he was living with Hortense, hebasically decided that he was going to
spend winters in Paris, which is kind ofironic as far as I'm concerned, but he
would spend winters in Paris and summersdown in Aix, and that's what he did.
(24:42):
And since she apparently was notparticularly fond of the south, for
whatever reasons, he had an apartmentthat she lived in with their son in
Paris, and occasionally she wouldgo down south, but most of the time,
basically for the rest of their lives,they spent about a half a year together.
He would go back and forth sometimes.
(25:03):
But she was there always for him, andthey say that because he was a grumpy,
kind of solitary person, there were twoor three people who could deal with him.
Zola could deal with him, Pissarrocould deal with him, you know, a
couple of others could deal with him.
But apparently, she was the only one whocould calm him down, so that even when
(25:23):
their relationship was no longer whatwe could call an amorous relationship,
you know, he was kind of like, "Oh, youknow, she's still there," kind of thing,
he always relied on her because she knewhow to talk to him, how to soothe him.
And later on, when he was50, which takes us to what?
'89. 1889. He discovered he had diabetes.
He was already in not great health.
(25:46):
He didn't drink, so he, I don't know, Imean it just was one of those things, but
he developed a very bad case of diabetes,and so he had more and more days when he
wasn't feeling well, and she was reallythe only person that could help him.
So she, she was very important inhis life, which is not surprising,
(26:08):
in that case, not surprisingthat he did over a lifetime that
many paintings of her, you know?
She was there for him, in a sense, it'sterrible to say it, but she was like a
piece of furniture he relied on, you know?
I mean, she was always therefor him one way or the other.
So of course by the time he got to bein his late 50s, people were starting
(26:29):
to notice his work, talk about his work.
He wasn't considered to bean impressionist artist.
It's always terrible when people wantto put a label on you, you know, say,
"This is the kind of work you do.This is what you do." He alternated
between the still life work and doingoutdoor work, and then of course
he did these other pieces as well.
And it was the money that his fathermade from being a banker that enabled
(26:54):
the family to buy this estate calledThe Jas du Bouffan, which is this
magnificent, you know, typical, Provencalhouse on this huge estate, and when he
wanted to go south, he stayed there.
He stayed in the house with hisfamily, but occasionally, he wanted
Hortense and his son to come south.
And since the family couldn't standher, and she didn't like the family,
(27:17):
he wound up buying an apartment inAix-en-Provence, and so, it was one
of these complicated people, you know?
It was not like Monet who lovedhis wife and had people over for
dinner all the time, you know?
This was the kind of thing whereit was like, Hortense and the
child were on one piece of land.
The family was on another, andthat's the way it stayed pretty much
for many, many years in his life.
(27:38):
And it was starting really in his 50sthat people started buying his work.
He apparently also, it's interesting, hewas very upset, and I can understand why,
and of course that's true today, whenhe discovered that a couple of dealers
and collectors started to buy his work.
Now I, the equivalent in terms of moneytoday, I have no idea, but let's say
(27:59):
they were buying it for the equivalentof today maybe 2,000 Euros and
reselling it for 20, and he discoveredthat there was a lot of that kind of
artistic speculation going on, whichmade him very resentful and very upset.
But at the same time, he had twoor three art critics who started
to say that his work was visionary.
(28:21):
A lot of people didn't understand it,and of course part of what that is, if
you look at his landscape painting, andI have a postcard in front of me right
here on the wall, this is one of thewatercolors he did, Mont Sainte-Victoire.
One of the things that happenedwas that, I don't know if this was
a conscious kind of choice or not.
It's almost impossible to knowwhen an artist works like this.
(28:45):
He started doing work, particularly withhis landscape work, that basically broke
down the forms of what he was seeing.
And he either worked from the house, theJas du Bouffan, or he worked from a tiny
little hut in the middle of a quarry.
The quarry is called Bibémus, andthis is apparently another place
(29:05):
that is going to open up this summerthat is going to be made into a site
that you can go and visit, to see.
Because it was from this particularsite that he did the most of his work,
painting the Mont Sainte-Victoire.
But he said that he wanted to use lightto show the forms, and he was obsessed
by the forms more than anything else.
(29:25):
He said, this is a quote from him,he said he wanted to treat nature by
analyzing its forms, the cylinders, thespheres, the cones, the boxes, and he
wanted to use color as a way of showingthe vibration of the forms in the light.
And this was basically his quest, he hadwhat really was called by a critic in
(29:48):
1889, a new vision of space and color.
So if you take a look at a lot of thelandscapes, which is not the case of the
portraits and the still life paintings,what you see is as he goes towards the
last few years of his life, the worksbasically start to disintegrate in the
sense that you have a landscape that'srecognizable as a landscape, but you see
(30:12):
it in terms of the sides, the facades ofthe trees, the houses, and everything.
And this, of course, became one of thereasons why the work that came afterwards
in the early 20th century was inspired byhis work, because it was a very modern,
very analytical approach to painting.
As opposed to the impressionistswho were really trying to just show
(30:34):
natural light and natural color.
So, this is basically what happened.
In 1899, when he was 60, a very famouscollector named Ambroise Vollard, who's
very famous in terms of the whole worldof impressionist and post-impressionist
artists, had already bought a fewof his works, and he put a reserve,
(30:55):
I guess that's the way of, I don'tknow what other term to put on it.
He basically said to him, "Whateveryou don't sell by the time you
die, I'm buying it." So it was likehe put a kind of reserve thing on
it, and of course, can imagine theamount of money he made off of that
afterwards, after Cezanne actually died.
From 1899 to when he died in 1909,he lived almost all the time in Aix.
(31:19):
He basically gave up on Paris.
Paris was never a place he really liked.
He went to Paris because that's wherethe art was, that's where the collectors
were, that's where his friends were.
Zola spent most of his time, and hereally gave up on it because he was
not that interested in being thereand his obsession at the end of his
life was exclusively painting thelandscape and Mont Sainte Victoire.
(31:41):
In 1903, both Zola and Pissarrodied, interestingly enough, and
apparently it devastated him.
It was the two people that werethe closest to him his entire life.
He said that Pissarro was like a fatherto him, and of course, Zola was the only
true close friend he had his entire life.
And by the way, I don't know,it would be interesting to know
(32:03):
whether Zola had any of his work.
I have no idea.
I don't know if there's away of finding out, you know?
Whether Zola what?
Whether he had any ofhis paintings, you know?
Oh.
You know, whether he was given someof his paintings or bought them.
It would be interesting to find out.
But by this time, he was living in thelittle house that we all know of as the
studio that he has in Aix, and he wassick, and he was really not well because
(32:27):
of the diabetes and everything else.
He had enormous migraines.
Apparently, for years and years hehad terrible migraines, and his son
took very good care of him as well.
His son, who, after he died,basically opened up a gallery,
and took care of his heritage.
And then in 1906, he was out paintingMont Sainte Victoire and he was at this
(32:48):
little quarry Bibémus, got caught in ahuge storm, and apparently he fainted.
He had what they call a malaise, butapparently he was unconscious in the
rain for hours until they found him.
And they wheeled him back to his house.
I have no idea wherehis wife, Hortense, was.
By that time, by the way, theyhad gotten married in 1889.
(33:09):
They'd actually legally gottenmarried, and his wife and his son had
been a good part of his inheritance.
He was not in good health at all and theytold him to stay in bed but he refused,
and the next day he went to his studioto paint and then he fainted again, and
then it turned out that he had caughtpneumonia, and one week later he died.
(33:29):
So he died in 1906, at the age of 67.
And of course, the irony of ironies,is that immediately he was proclaimed
to be a visionary and the precursorof everything modern and new.
By this time, Picasso was alreadypainting and he was inspired specifically
(33:51):
by the work he did on landscape, anda whole bunch of other artists, the
cubists, the fauves, all of thesemovements that came at that time,
decided that Cezanne was their hero.
And in 1920, to me this is the kind ofbitter irony of things, in 1920, so he
died in 1906, in 1920, Cezanne's workwas the work that was representing
(34:14):
France at the Venice Biennale.
This is, so this is 14 years after hisdeath and they don't usually do posthumous
artists in the Venice Biennale, you know.
But by the 1920, his work recognizedas being the work of a visionary, of
a genius, and of course it followedsuit for just about every other group
that followed into the 20th century.
(34:35):
And something I didn't know, heinspired a lot of Russian artists.
And I went online to see where alot of the collection is, because
of course we know about Orsay and weknow about the work in a lot of the
places like the Metropolitan in NewYork or the Barnes collection which
is in Philadelphia, but guess whichcountry has the most work by Cezanne?
(34:58):
It's Russia.
Right, that's...
Pretty amazing when you think about it.
I mean, it just, you know, really.
So, of course, he's the quintessentialartist who was not understood
most of his life, but who had thisvision that basically inspired
so many other artists after him.
(35:19):
And I was trying to figure outyesterday after going through all of
this and reading all of this stuffand looking at my books, which are
the works that I like the most.
It's kind of interestingbecause his work is not light.
It's not happy work.
There's nothing happy,really, about his painting.
You know, a lot of the impressionists,their work is very happy to look at.
(35:39):
Well, of course I love the apples.
I love still life work, so Ifind the apples intriguing.
But I think the work I like themost is the portraits, you know.
And if you look at the portraitsof his wife, he painted her
over, and over, and over again.
Basically it's almost the samepose, you know, she's in this long
dress and sitting in this chair.
But the variation of colors, textures,and the density of the color are just
(36:03):
absolutely amazing to see, you know.
So, I don't know, if I could draw you 45times, Annie, I don't know how different
the drawings would look, you know?
You would not draw me 45 timesbecause I don't have that
kind of patience, sweetheart.
I
would have told him to getlost a long time before he had
(36:23):
the chance to paint me once.
I don't sit still that long.
Oh my goodness, can you imagine?
Sitting still for hours?
Hours.
Hours.
Because when I was looking at kind ofa lot of his paintings, what it looked
like to me was that he had painted alot of men as a matter of fact, because-
... there are painters like Degasthey only ever painted women.
(36:44):
You know, dancers, whatever.
There were lots of painters who paintedwomen typically, and he tends to paint
mostly men, I think, except for hiswife, who was very, very patient.
Except for his wife.
Bless her heart.
Perhaps he didn't want to pay alot of money for people to pose?
I don't know.
You know.
He could have worked fromphotography as a matter of fact.
(37:07):
If, I mean, he could have taken ashot of the peoples playing cards or
whatever, and worked from a photo.
That's true.
That's true, but he was not likeSeurat, the pointillist who came
afterwards who basically didin fact work from photography.
He was still interested indirect observation between the
(37:29):
human eye and what he could see.
But, what is interesting-- and you areright, I mean, he painted his son, he
painted his friends, he painted AmbroiseVollard many times, he painted...
He used his wife because shewas... she was there, you
know, and she was a good model.
But I think in all the cases, theperson is the excuse for making the
painting that is about shape andcolor and light, basically, you know?
(37:52):
Right.
And clearly, he was obsessed withsome themes, because he painted
Sainte-Victoire so many times.
And he was not the onlypainter who did this.
No.
Matisse, of course, was veryinspired by him, Picasso and Matisse.
I have a, some here.
So he did... What they know ofis that there were 900 paintings
(38:13):
left, including those in privatecollections, when he died.
That's a huge number.
That's an enormous amount.
And 400 watercolors.
He did lots and lots of watercolors.
They're absolutely beautiful.
They're just wonderful.
80 portraits, 45 or 46 of his wife thatare known, 200 still life paintings,
(38:34):
and 90 or more paintings in oil ofMont Sainte-Victoire, and then the
equivalent amount in watercolor as well.
So these were, of course,his obsessive subjects.
But he did produce a huge amount of work.
And, of course, now when you knowthat paintings sell for sums that are
(38:54):
absolutely obscene, you know, I mean, Ilive for art in a way, but $250 million
for a painting, and there are others thathave been sold for prices like that, I
mean, oh my God, it just... you know, it'sbeyond kind of comprehension in some way.
But he is really considered to be one ofthe... or the father of modern art, partly
(39:15):
because he analyzed, even intentionallyor not, he analyzed what he was looking
at in a way that was breaking it down.
And it's true, he couldhave used photography, but
apparently, he did not, you know?
He chose not to.
Right.
Right.
So he was, in a way, he was likethe charniere, how do you say that?
(39:35):
Oh, I don't know how you say that.
He was the link.
Yeah.
He was the link, really.
Between the impressionists and modernism.
That's right.
Right?
So,
he's in between.
But he's still a lot in the Orsay Museum.
Yes, because he's part of what isthe category, if you want to call it
that, of post-impressionist, okay?
(39:56):
Which of course includes Seuratand the people who did all
these little dots, you know?
I don't think he did dots.
He did shapes.
He painted the shape, gave it volume byusing different hints of color and things?
I don't know.
I-
Exactly.
Exactly.
And then in his oil and in hiswatercolors, it's even more so
because they're... What's niceabout them, and I happen to love
(40:18):
watercolor painting in general, butthere's a lot of open, airy space.
So you can see the angles, theshapes of the buildings, the trees,
the Mont Saint-Michel itself,you know, he breaks it down.
You really see the direct link betweenhim and what Picasso and a couple of
other artists developed as cubism.
They just went in a direction that I findbasically not particularly interesting
(40:41):
because it became so just analyticalbecause, Cezanne's work is beautiful.
I mean, that's the other thing.
It's like, there's beauty inall this painting, you know?
Yeah.
It's very beautiful.
It's very easy to look at.
And, okay, one detail about hispersonality that I found interesting
is that he didn't like to be touched.
Uh-huh.
(41:02):
There are a lot ofpeople like that, really.
Apparently as he got older, it got worse.
And his housekeeper, he had asked herto be very careful not... never to touch
him, and he didn't even want her coator her dress to touch him in any way.
Isn't that weird?
That's weird.
(41:22):
That's weird.
That's weird.
So, but I mean, that's just aquirky personality trait that can
get worse over time, you know?
But it makes more... Itmakes him more human.
You know, I mean, he wasn't aphallocrat like Picasso, you know?
I mean, there's lots of people who say,"I don't want to look at Picasso's work
because of his attitude towards women."
Well, I'm not... I don't believethat that's the right attitude,
(41:44):
but that's just me personally.
But Cezanne was just this grumpy,solitary human who basically had two
or three people that were importantto him, and that was it, you know?
And obviously being sick, physicallyill didn't help, you know?
Treating type 2 diabetestoday is complicated.
I can't imagine what it musthave been like back then.
(42:06):
It must have wreaked havoc on all hisorgans, you know, even if he was super
careful, they didn't have the medsthat we have today to deal with it.
No.
And that was... Like, living to 66when you have type 2 diabetes, back
then, must have been very difficult.
It's not an easy disease.
(42:27):
No.
Whether it's type 1 or type 2.
I mean, type 1, he would have been dead.
He would have been dead.
Yeah.
There's a photograph of himtaken by his son, probably just
a few months before he died.
You know, today someone who's66 doesn't look that old.
He was this... He looked so old, withthis huge white beard, and with a cane.
Okay, so he still produceda huge amount of work.
(42:50):
It's absolutely remarkable, you know?
I would love to have some applesin front of me right now, you know?
I'm just... You know.
Yes, yes.
I can't wait to go back.
Yeah.
But he also, he did peachesand he also did cherries.
Yes.
He liked fruit.
He liked fruit.
He liked the forms of fruit, you know?
But no, no oranges.
(43:12):
I don't remember seeing orangesor clementines or things.
Oh, I don't know.
Which is weird because they groweasily in that part of the country.
That's true.
But whatever.
You like the fruits you like.
It's okay.
I think I'm going to wait till Septemberto go, because I don't want to go in
July and August with a huge crush,but I am planning on spending two days
(43:34):
there with my friend from Marseille,and visiting everything again, because
I go there every single year, andkind of... this kind of pilgrimage.
But this time, it's going to be reallyfun to go out and see all these other
places that he sat in and look at MontSainte-Victoire the same way he did.
Right, and I'm in Paris as we record this,and so I will try to go to the Orsay.
(43:56):
Hopefully not all his work isalready packed up and sitting in Aix.
Hopefully, there's stillquite a bit in the Orsay.
We'll see.
I'll try it.
Oh, sure.
I'm sure there will be.
I don't think they're going toget too many paintings coming
out of Russia, but that's anotherwhole story, you know, so...
Yes.
Thank you so much, Elyse.
You're welcome, Annie.
Au revoir.
Au revoir.
(44:22):
Again, I want to thank my patrons forgiving back and supporting the show.
Patrons get several exclusiverewards for doing so.
You can see them at patreon.com/joinus.
And a special shout-out thisweek to my new Join Us in France
champion, Danielle Binenki.
(44:45):
Would you join her too?
You can do it for as, as little as $3a month, but if you can afford it, I
would love to have you pledge more so youcan have access to more of the rewards.
And to support Elyse, goto patreon.com/elysart.
I'm going to read you a couple of reviewsthat people left of my VoiceMap tours.
(45:08):
Somebody left this review of myMontmartre tour this week: "Really
nice tour, well-produced, and goodstories to make it come alive."
And a longer one about my Marais tour,someone anonymous again wrote: "I remember
our first trip to Paris which was in 2002.
Except for the cool room at the ParisHilton with a great view of the Eiffel
(45:30):
Tower at night that we were fortunateenough to be upgraded to, I thought
of Paris as just another big city.
How wrong I was!
We have been back several times sincethen, and I am so into the history
of Paris, and as well as France.
I find it totally fascinating.
We will be there in April,and we will be staying in the
(45:51):
Marais area for the second time.
If only I had known of yourwalking tours on past trips.
I've already listened to yourVoiceMap two or three times, and I
want to listen to it again and again.
I can hardly wait to get there.
We're also going to other cities,towns in France, and I'll also be
looking for other VoiceMap tours.
(46:11):
I'm so happy to have found this.
They are better than private toursthat cost 10 or 20 times more."
Well, thank you very much, Anonymous.
Yes, I do agree that a lot of VoiceMaptours are better than in-person tours.
Remember that podcast listeners geta big discount for buying these tours
from my website, and there's my newbaby called Gothic Paris as well.
(46:35):
And by Gothic, I mean the second Gothiccathedral built in the world, Notre Dame.
Now, if you buy directly fromme, it's a manual process will
take, you know, few hours.
If you need it immediately,buy from the VoiceMap app.
And if you want to read more reviews ofthese tours, go to joinusinfrance.com/vmr.
(46:57):
That stands for VoiceMap Reviews.
If you're planning a trip to Franceand you need personalized advice,
hire me as your itinerary consultant.
I can tell a lot of you are goingto be visiting France soon because
this service is very, very busy.
You may not find a time slot to talk tome as soon as you would like, so don't put
(47:17):
it off if it's your intention to do this.
Ready to start?
Visit joinusinfrance.com/boutiqueand follow the email instructions.
All right, someone recently wroteto me with this question, "How
are the French feeling aboutAmerican tourists these days?"
She and her husband are planning atrip to Paris and the Loire Valley, and
(47:39):
they are feeling a little bit nervousabout how they might be received.
And I get it.
I've been hearing this kind ofconcern more often lately, but
honestly, I really don't thinkyou have too much to worry about.
These feelings come and go.
They're cyclical.
If you've been paying attentionfor a while, you remember the whole
(48:01):
freedom fries during the Bush years.
That was a weird moment and a good exampleof how political tensions can bubble
up, but they rarely have much impact onhow regular people treat one another.
The truth is, French people aregenerally very good at separating
the people from the politics.
(48:21):
That applies to our own leadersas well, maybe especially so.
In France, we're kind of known forelecting someone, and then three
weeks later, acting like we neverliked him at all in the first place.
So if you're an American planning avisit, don't let politics stop you,
come if France is your happy place.
(48:43):
The vast majority of French peoplewill welcome you warmly, especially
if you make a little effort withthe language and basic politeness.
You know, don't forget your Mercior Bonjour or your S'il te plaît,
especially the Bonjour though.
And honestly, the French are farmore interested in how you take your
coffee or that wine you're drinking,than who your president is right now.
(49:07):
So relax, enjoy, don't overthink it.
You're very welcome here.
My thanks to podcast editorsAnne and Christian Cotovan,
who produced the transcripts.
Next week on the podcast, an episodewith Francois Senechal, the friendly
guide from Provence, who is a returnguest on the podcast, who will tell
(49:27):
us about his other love, Corsica.
We haven't talked about Corsicaall that much, and it's a part of
France that is absolutely beautiful.
He'll help us discover hiddengems, great stories, and the man
talks with a smile in his voice.
He's such a pleasure to talk to.
Thank you so much for listening,and I hope you join me next time, so
(49:48):
we can look around France together.
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent, andCopyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance.
It is released under a CreativeCommons attribution, non-commercial,
no derivatives license.
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com