This exhibition could be considered as an illustration of the highly significant statement made by Pissarro towards the end of his life when, in 1895, he had just seen the Cézanne paintings the art dealer Vollard had brought together in his Parisian art gallery : « in Pontoise, Cézanne […] was influenced by me and I by him. […] What is striking is […] the affinity between certain landscapes he painted in Auvers and Pontoise and mine. By Jove! We were inseparable! But one thing is certain; each of us retained the only thing that matters, "his sense of feeling"… This is easy to demonstrate…» (letter to his son Lucien, November 22, 1895).
The Musée d'Orsay show assembles some sixty paintings and a number of graphic works from public and private collections around the world, with the aim of exploring the relationship between the work of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) over the two decades of their close friendship from around 1865 – the beginning of their careers – until 1885. They first met in Paris in the studio of a Swiss painter in 1861, and a profound and lasting friendship was to develop between them. In 1874, Cézanne stated how important he felt Pissarro's appreciation of him to be: «I, who have a good opinion of myself, know he [Pissarro] has a good opinion of me … » (letter to his mother, September 26, 1874).
With its English title; "Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro 1865-1885", the exhibition has been conceived by Joachim Pissarro, great-grandson of the artist and the Curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York: the show presents the two artists on an equal footing and features, throughout its succession of chronological thematic sections, a number of paired works, each an apt demonstration of the interplay between them.
Portraits and self-portraits, still-lifes and landscapes – of Louveciennes and later of Pontoise and Auvers-sur-Oise – are juxtaposed to illuminate the converging visions of Cézanne and Pissarro in around 1875: if, amongst the Impressionists, Monet and Sisley were attracted to the theme of water, Cézanne and Pissarro concentrated mostly on the countryside, painting traditional villages with their streets and houses, winding roads and views of the woods .With the Franco-Prussian war and the Commune, Monet went to settle in Argenteuil in December 1871, while in 1872, Pissarro chose the region of Pontoise and Auvers-sur-Oise where he was soon joined by Cézanne who shared with him his art of giving structure to the painted landscape. In return, several Cézanne paintings show the benefit of Pissarro’s advice, who had urged his friend to lighten the dark range of colours that had characterised his early work. It was Pissarro then, who initiated the naturalistic trend with pastoral themes within Impressionism: a role that would be confirmed by a number of writers and critics such as Emile Zola, Théodore Duret and Gustave Geffroy.
Later, Cézanne would reinterpret several of Pissarro's earlier compositions and would adopt some of the elder man's long held points of view.
Hanging their work together and highlighting their "kinship" – as apparent in their approach to the "silent world" of their still-lifes as in their exploration of "rustic" themes – and exploring the enduring links that united the two men until their last meetings in the mid-1880s, enables Cézanne and Pissarro to be interpreted from a fresh angle. Yet each was keen to assert his own personality. In contrast to Cézanne's pure, analytical and deserted landscapes, Pissarro preferred an inhabited environment often evoking a human presence by introducing peasants into his compositions.
Pissarro continued to be a faithful and passionate apologist for Cézanne's art: "You would find it hard to believe how difficult it is to have certain art-lovers, friends of the Impressionists, understand fully all the great qualities of Cézanne. […] Degas and Renoir are enthusiasts of Cézanne's work. […] Was I well-inspired when in 1861, Oller and I went to see that curious Provencal in the Swiss studio where Cézanne was painting academic studies that were the laughing stock of all those sterile students in the school…" (letter to his son Lucien, December 4, 1895). And Cézanne also admitted to his debt to the painter whom in 1905 he called "the humble and colossal Pissarro", confiding towards the very end of his life: "As for the old Pissarro, he was a father to me. He was a man to be consulted and something like God" (according to J. Borély, "Cézanne à Aix", L’Art vivant, 1926).
