Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) was known as "the father of modern painting". In the long art history before Cezanne, all the painters had focused on representing the objects, but the artist did imitate the natural slaves.
Cezanne had initially participated in the Impressionist movement and the first and third impressionist painting exhibition. But the Impressionists did not pay attention to the form and structure, only paid attention to color effect which was misfit with Cezanne. From the view of nature, Cezanne was a classicist who most admired the balanced, tranquil and solid structure in Poissin’s art. Cezanne had a famous saying, “According to the nature, to redraw the paintings of Poussin.” In the pursuit of the elusive shadow, Impressionism ignored the shape and contour of the object. Although their paintings were bright and colorful, it was disorderly and unsystematic seen from Cezanne. Cezanne finally left his impressionistic peers and returned to his hometown Akers to begin the exploration and research for art.
Cezanne's greatest wish was to try to truly and objectively describe the world based on his own observation instead of subject to traditional experience and rules like the past painters. He believed to be faithful to his own visual feeling when facing the nature, so that the works had Impressionist intense colors and did not abandon the structure and form of objects to show Poissin’s solid, eternal and harmonious feeling. But the pursuit of the structure and the color seemed too difficult. They themselves were a pair of irreconcilable contradictions. Cezanne fell into despair in his exploration. Through the painful efforts, he finally created his own artistic style, and gradually formed a new concept of art.
Cezanne once said, “Everything in the nature forms a similar ball, cone, cylinder stand. People must be based on these simple images to draw, and then people can draw what they want to draw.” In order to describe the object structure, Cezanne required objects to be still as much as they could. This requirement was quite difficult for models to do, so what he painted was mostly still life. This made him carry out a long-time research on the structure of the still life.
Cezanne's second point was to abandon all the traditional laws, painting from zero. For the real intention, Cezanne believed that many accepted traditional rules did not lead to the real paintings. Such as perspective, it was to guide people's mind and create the fantasy in the three-space with a considerable distance from what we see the truth. So Cezanne tried to not use perspective and shade contrast to represent spatial relations, only by the harmony of color and contrast to build the body and show a profound sense of space. Cezanne was not going to follow the traditional painting skills, and always studied the objects carefully and thought to describe object manipulation, just like before he nobody painted. Sometimes he should observe 20 minutes to leave a pen. He believed that painting should show the structure of object to achieve a solid magnificent effect, just like using the brick to build a wall, or with a brush or a painting knife to arrange layers of color, showing the volume and depth to have a solid building-like feeling. Cezanne once said, lines and shading did not exist, but between colors. The volume of images was expressed from the mutual relationship between the color accuracy.
Because Cezanne gave up all the old rules and explored painting technique expressions by himself, so his works often had a lack of naïve skills and were even ridiculed as “graffiti” by some people. His first concern in the painting was a balance of structure and composition of the object. For this purpose, he not only used the simple skills, but also applied the stretch and deformation techniques, and even abandoned object texture, making his works extensive strong, simple, naive, and profound.
How to paint flowers in the oil paintings?
Both the plants in the pot and flowers inserted in the vase are the still lives theme that artists love. They can be alone made into the painting, or can also be used as a part of a group of still lives, such as adding some fruit, a bowl or a glass bottle pattern.
About drawing paper, canvas and painting board
There are many materials that can be used for painting. Drawing paper, canvas and painting board are commonly used. But the beginners should note that no matter which material you choose, please remember to process the painting bottom into no oil absorption or less.
Russian painter Serov's painting style
Serov was an outstanding Russian portrait painter in the alternate period of the nineteenth century and twentieth Century. And he was an important representative of Russian realism painting at the beginning of this century.
