I never tire of its silent presence as I wander around the town and around it – it's always there when I sip coffee in the village café, when I wander the pathways that overflow with the aroma of plants, when I admire its ever-changing colors at countless viewpoints. I can also see it from the windows of the rooms of the hotel where I stayed, Le Pigonnet (a converted farmhouse from the 18th century), like a painting in a picture frame.
View of Mount Saint Victor from Aix Figure John Heseltine/Alamy
Some believe that the mountain is famous for a battle at its feet in ancient times. Yes, it was here in 102 BC that the Romans won the first crucial battle to repel the invasion of barbarian legions from the Teutonics. Legend has it that its name, Victor Hill (meaning victory in English), was used to commemorate the victory, and the word "holy" was added in the Middle Ages for religious reasons.
But this rugged limestone peak has contributed much more to the world than that, thanks to the revolutionary artist who grew up in Aix, Paul Cézanne.
Cézanne, born in 1839, has always loved the mountain. "When he was a child, he always skipped school with his friend Emile Zola, and in the countryside at the foot of the mountain, they ran, climbed, and hunted." Said Philip Cézanne, cézanne's great-grandson and also a modern artist.
The painter and his masterpiece The Great Bather by Ken Welsh/Getty Images
The artist later went to Paris and met many of his fellow travelers, such as Pissarro, Manet, Monet, and Renoir. Under Pissarro's influence, his style was brighter and more impressionist, especially evident in his 1873 work The Hanged Man, with faint colors and broken brushstrokes. Even so, in this painting you can still see him boldly changing established artistic rules, even deliberately using the wrong perspective (a path that stretches to the left of the painting; falls at a strange angle to the right bank of the river).
Cézanne's paintings were not very acceptable to critics at the time, and Cézanne, who had been a country boy in his heart, realized that he did not really belong to Paris. He belonged to his hometown of Provence. Although he also lived in Marseille, Switzerland and Paris from time to time, Aix was always in his heart, and Sainte-Victor Hill gradually became the subject of his creations.
"In the beginning, Cézanne depicted Mont Sainte-Victor from a distance at his parents' home, the Jas de Bouffan estate." Philip said. It was not until his later years that Cézanne began to truly turn Mont Sainte-Victor into his creative subject. He uses more detailed brushstrokes and richer colors to paint the way the mountain looks at different angles.
Light from Provence Figure John Heseltine/Alamy
Cézanne later decided to paint the eternal mountain in a very simple, even architectural drawing. In fact, he also used this method in other paintings, including his still life paintings and his landmark series "The Bather". None of this, however, compares to his paintings for Mont Sainte-Victor. Beginning in 1870, Cézanne painted St. Victor's Hill a total of 87 times, and over time he gradually refined the geometric outlines of color, gradually making his mountains more and more flat, abstract and fragmented. He told his friend, Joaquin Gasquet, who was also a writer and art critic: "If I were to invent or imagine the details of the picture, I would rather break the brush." ”
His favorite paintings on the southern slope of the mountain, with two villages: Gardana and Letolone, as the center of the painting. Here, rugged rocks rise up, and valleys and pine forests are lush with greenery, occasionally dotted with brown and some orange. On Frères Hill in Gardana, which overlooks St. Victor's Hill, the locals placed a replica of Cézanne's painting of Mount Santa Victor here, and it was here that I felt the genius of the artist. He's not just painting mountains, he's capturing moments of the village. I stood for a long time, amazed, and compared the pyramid-shaped hill in front of me with Cézanne's paintings that inspired later Cubism.
At the nearby Bibemi quarry, Cézanne rented a hut to facilitate the observation of hand-hewn gravel blocks. Here, he painstakingly painted a lot of ochre rocks, and the background was always towering mount Saint Victor. And his last few works—and at the same time the most famous—were completed on a bench on the Margaret Trail on Louvo Hill, just steps from his studio in Aix.
Today's quarry and Cézanne's cottage Figure Hemis/Alamy
I quite recommend visiting this studio. The vases, water jugs, and plastic squares he had painted were all there, as if the painter himself had just left the house. There, I followed in his footsteps up the hill and went to the places he loved to stay when he painted. There are some changes here that disappoint me a little. Soon, though, I held my breath. Looking through the woods, staying on the distant peaks, the brilliance that Cézanne gave it shone brightly on it. I think of the last time Cézanne, 67, came here, when he had a thunderstorm but kept painting. Just a month ago, he declared to the young widow, Émile Bernard, "I swear to paint until I die." ”
A week later, Cézanne died of acute pneumonia.
However, the most fascinating part of this mountain is undoubtedly its back. There is the beautiful town of Vauvenargues, and a fortified castle built between the 13th and 17th centuries hidden in the valley. Of particular interest is that Picasso, who admired Cézanne, was once the owner of the castle. It is said that he bought the castle in 1958 so that he could see St. Victor's Hill.
"Picasso was like a young mad dog in 1900," said Denis Coutagne, a member of the Paul Cézanne Society and former curator of the Granet Museum in Aix," "and he was obsessed with all the painters who revolutionized art, including Matisse, Toulouse-Lotrec, Deland, and so on." Then he fell in love with Cézanne, and for the first time in his life Picasso met a great mentor. ”
"Picasso said to me one day that Cézanne was his god." Philip added.
Mount Sainte-Victor painted by Cézanne in 1890
Picasso, Matisse, Braque... After carefully studying Cézanne's paintings about Mount Saint Victor and, of course, other themes, these artists plunged headlong into Cubism, ushering in the era of modern art throughout the 20th century. Picasso once said, "He is the father of all of us!" ”
And the mountain that Cézanne cherished, always there, is more than anything else.
guide
The small town of Aix-en-Cézanne, where Cézanne was born, raised, painted and laid to rest, has a complete Cézanne-themed route, including the painter's house, studio, walking trail, quarry, Granet Museum and other attractions, which can follow the C signs on the ground in Aix. www.aixenprovencetourism.com
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