Still life: 4 ~ Cézanne & Chardin

The Silver Tureen, Jean Siméon Chardin Paris, c. 1728

Having discussed the significant differences between the still lifes of Cézanne (1839–1906) and those of Roelof Koets (1592 - 1655) Renoir, (1841–1919), and Gauguin (1848 – 1903), I had intended to write about Cézanne’s influence on Braque’s still lifes (as a representative cubist whose work seems closest to that of Cézanne’s). I still intend to write about this, but think that there is more to write about Cézanne’s still lifes before doing so, (which is of course a very considerable understatement, but I am only thinking of my own limited purposes).

The Blue Vase, Cézanne c. 1885

The work which has given me pause before bringing Braque (1882 – 1963) onto the scene is the Chardin masterwork here illustrated. It is in itself a beautiful painting, and my use of it to illustrate certain aspects of Cézanne’s work implies not the least denigration. What though is the principal difference between this painting of Chardin’s, The Silver Tureen, and the Cézanne I have chosen for comparison, The Blue Vase? It is that Chardin’s still life has a narrative context and is domestic, whereas Cézanne’s is so compelling in the tautness of its composition that we scarcely even think    of the flower arranger. From corner to corner, and across every square inch of   The Blue Vase there is an equality of attention and application which binds the work into a coherent whole. The picture has taken as subject its own composition.

None of this is to say that Chardin was careless of those aspects of his painting which form the foreground, support, and background. Far from it. Nevertheless, these are all subordinate to the tureen, the hare, the bird, the fruits, and the cat. All of these latter are finely painted, and the colours of the orange, apple, and pears are so rich that they might almost be plucked from the picture. And yet, these fruits — although finely balanced within the composition — remain to a degree arbitrarily placed, (and Cézanne would never have placed a fruit on top of a tureen, as here). Further, although the fruits are carefully modelled by the depiction of light and shade, they lack the substantial form (as shape) of Cézanne’s fruits, because they become lost in the shadows.

The most dynamic aspects of the composition are to be found in the angles of the hare’s legs and ears, the cat’s feet, the bird’s wing, and the heads of the hare and the cat. However, even these ‘animal’ elements — like the fruits — are separated from one another. Between the cat and the hare there is a space in which nothing is happening: it is merely a diffuse brownish patch. In Cézanne’s The Blue Vase there are no vacant spaces; not a single area where something interesting is not going on, or is not related to another part of the composition. For a more specific comparison, we can look at the undulating S–curve formed in Chardin’s painting where the hare’s body follows and echoes the curve of the tureen. Scarcely is this noticed; and yet when Cézanne paints the baroque fluting at the top of his vase — which he neatly echoes in the plate edging and in the side of the vase — we find not only a deep satisfaction in this subtle linear play, but also a second pleasure in the ‘negative’ shape formed on the left, between the vase, the plate, the table top, and the flowers. Moreover, this negative shape itself consists of subtle colours and textures. There is a sense in which all of Cézanne’s quietly revolutionary and painstakingly exploratory endeavours come to full fruition in this one small detail.                                                          

The Blue Vase (detail), Cézanne