Fortunately M. Vollard has collected also a large number of Cézanne’s _obiter dicta_ on art. These have all Cézanne’s pregnant wisdom and racy style. They often contain a whole system of æsthetics in a single phrase, as, for instance: “What’s wanted is to do Poussin over again from Nature.”
They show, moreover, the natural bias of Cézanne’s feelings and their gradual modification as his understanding became more profound. What comes out clearly, and it must never be forgotten in considering his art, is that his point of departure was from Romanticism. Delacroix was his god and Ingres, in his early days, his devil--a devil he learned increasingly to respect, but never one imagines really to love, “_ce Dominique est très fort mais il m’emm_----.” That Cézanne became a supreme master of formal design every one would nowadays admit, but there is some excuse for those contemporaries who complained of his want of drawing. He was not a master of line in the sense in which Ingres was. “The contour escapes me,” as he said. That is to say he arrived at the contour by a study of the interior planes; he was always plastic before he was linear. In his early works, such, for instance, as the “Scène de plein air” (see Plate), he is evidently inspired by Delacroix; he is almost a romanticist himself in such work, and his design is built upon the contrasts of large and rather loosely drawn silhouettes of dark and light. In fact it is the method of Tintoretto, Rubens, and Delacroix.
In the “Bathers resting,” painted in 1877, there is already a great change. It is rather by the exact placing of plastic units than by continuous flowing silhouettes that the design holds. Giorgione, perhaps, is behind this, but no longer Tintoretto, and, above all, Poussin has intervened.
In later works, such as the portrait of “Mme. Cézanne in a greenhouse,” the plasticity has become all-important, there is no longer any suggestion of a romantic _decor_; all is reduced to the purest terms of structural design.
These notes on Cézanne’s development are prompted by the illustrations in M. Vollard’s book. These are numerous and excellent, and afford a better opportunity for a general study of Cézanne’s _œuvre_ than any other book. In fact, when the time comes for the complete appreciation of Cézanne M. Vollard’s book will be the most important document existing. It should, however, have a far wider appeal than that. I hope that after the war M. Vollard will bring out a small cheap edition[53]--it should become a classic biography. To say, as I would, that M. Vollard’s book is a monument worthy of Cézanne himself is to give it the highest praise.
