Cezanne at the National Gallery

The 100+ Cezanne paintings will be on display until early May. Combined with the major Dada exhibit opening today, the NGA is a must-see.

It was a well organized exhibit, concentrating on Cezanne's relationship to his native Provence. Multiple landscapes centered around his family house, around various familiar mountain and fishing port scenes, show how Cezanne painted the same scenes with subtle changes. His familiar portraits and self-portraits (including "The Card Players") show his technique.

The exhibit smartly combines subject division with chronological changes. So you see, how Cezanne's early technique was refined, and how he began using the wide variety of beautiful blues and greens, which I like the best. But then you see age catching up, with his paintings becoming darker as time goes on.

The sources of this exhibit are varied: several from the NGA itself, and from other American musuems (Met, Moma, Kimball, Philadelphia, Art Institute, etc.) and from Europe (Hermitage, Tate, Musee d'Orsay, and several German and Swiss museums). Two of the landscapes come from the White House collection (it makes you wonder what the White House collection consists of, and whether it itself could be the subject of an exhibit).

Interesting tid-bit from the show: Cezanne, growing up in a fairly well to do family near Aix, was a boyhood friend of Zola. Never would have put the two of them together.