Czanne's Watercolour Technique

Author(s): Kurt Badt

Source: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 83, No. 487 (Oct., 1943), pp. 246-248
Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/868734
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Jean Lemaire: Painter of ArchitecturalFantasies

Lemaire's position in the landscape painting of his
time can be fairly exactly defined. He springs primarily
from Poussin. In some of his compositions he borrowed
the partly ruined but not picturesque buildings which
Poussin uses as a background for his religious and
mythological stories. In others he imitates the complete temples and villas which Poussin introduces into
his later landscapes. But he lacks Poussin's heroic
quality. He is far removed from the picturesquenessof
Salvator Rosa, and from the idyllic luminous landscapes
of Claude. His landscapes are simply evocative of
antiquity but in paintings like the Dublin composition
he shows imagination in the combination of his architectural elements. Hubert Robert need not have been
ashamed of the circular temple on the bridge, and the
colossal sculptures on the left introduce an individual if
somewhat eccentric note. This is not great painting,
but it foreshadows the romantic-classical spirit which
scattered classical ruins and temples of Venus through
the gardens of the later eighteenth century.x6
1" Circumstances have prevented me from seeing certain other
works attributed to Lemaire, and mentioned in Thieme-Becker,
particularly those in French provincial galleries, such as Bordeaux,
Le Puy and Fontainebleau. Two paintings by him are mentioned
in the Aedes Walpolianae(1747, p. 61) as being at Houghton. They
represented Alexanderat the tombof Achilles, and The Consultingof the
Sybilline Oracles. They are not now traceable in the Hermitage to
which the majority of the Houghton collection passed, and I have

not been able to determine whether they are still at Houghton.

Another composition at Knowsley, attributed to Poussin, and
representing The Arts appealingto theGeniusof Rome,seems to me to be
probably by Lemaire, though I only know it from the engraving
by Winstanley.
Dr. Borenius has kindly called my attention to the following
paintings attributed to Lemaire in eighteenth century English
sale catalogues:
1725/6. And. Hay. Lot 34. Diogenes throwing away his dish.
Le Mere. Bt. ?31 Ios. Lord Burlington.
I731/2. Sir Andrew Fountaine. Lot 41. Cupid bringing
Satyr before Venus. Le Mere Poussin. ?3 7s.
Cocks. Lot 41. Cupid bringing a Satyr before Venus.
1731/2.
Le Mere.
1738. Mr. Paris. First day, lot 15. A Landscape, manner of
Gaspar. Le Noire (sic.). Bt. ?I 9s. Glynn.
1743. Geminiani. First day, lot 54. Hippomenes and Atalanta.
Le Mere and N. Poussin. C12 55s.
Knight. Lot i. A Seaport. Le Mere.
1744/5.
It is, of course, possible that some of these may be by Pierre
not Jean, and in the case of the Fountaine and Cocks pictures, which
may be identical, this is even likely, since Pierre was a regular
imitator of Poussin's figure compositions, and these references may
be to copies after the latter's treatment of the subject. On the other
hand those which represent landscapes are more likely to be by
Jean. It is even possible tentatively to identify the Hay painting
with one in the Cook collection (cf. HERBERT COOK: Catalogueof the
Paintingsat DoughtyHouse,iii, 1915, No. 432) which depicts the story
of Diogenes in a landscape setting. GRAUTOFF(Nicolas Poussin,I914,
ii, p. 280) has already suggested Jean Lemaire as the author of this
painting. For some reason Cook rejects the interpretation of the
picture as the story of Diogenes, though in fact it unquestionably
represents this subject.

TECHNIQUE
WATERCOLOUR
CEZANNE'S
BY KURT BADT
EZANNE'S watercolours demonstrate,
beside the effects intended and the means
used to attain them, the difficulties arising
from the creative process of the artist
himself. This is evident from the fact
that, out of his nearly four hundred aquarellesmore than
three hundred and fifty are unfinished. But it is noteworthy that not one of them has been abandoned because
of technical mistakes.
There are, I think, three different types of unfinished
watercolours by Cezanne.
First : sheets intended as complete pictures composed
to fill up a square and be marked off with a frame.
They show part of the objects fairly finished whilst others
are only indicated.
Second: sheets likewise intended as complete pictures, but giving the effect of complete " realisation"
by means of single strokesof colour whilst a large portion
of the paper is still blank.
Third : pictorial, rhythmical and colouristic motives
without the intention of constituting a picture in the
usual meaning of the word.
Sheets of the first type are proof of C6zanne's difficulty in retaining his " poetical vision " in the face of
nature, with its changing aspects and infinity of details.
Whilst painting, Cezanne must have discovered particularities which did not harmonize with the shape of

his original conception, or even have observed important

relations between natural objects belonging to one composition which could be carried over as a motif into
another composition. Especially when he was overworked, he fell from the high level of his creative
imagination and then gave up his work.

In a different category are his unfinished watercolours

of the second type. Though unfinished, they are
perfectly " realised." The method employed on these
sheets is borrowed from drawing, which by means of
strokes creates rather than imitates forms. Cezanne
attained by a system of coloured shadows what, before
him, was achieved only by monochrome drawing:
namely, to make solid substance plastically visible and
intelligible without reproducing its surface.
In the watercolours in question Cezanne uses colours
as the Old Masters employed pencil, charcoal or ink.
He does not cover continuous planes but areas adjoining
bodies reaching their outlines. The result is that the
surfaces of the bodies with single coloured tints flash
up here and there, the colour touches representing
darkpartsof bodiesor darksbehindbodies.From the contrast
between them and the specially defined white surfaces
these vacant parts develop into clearly perceivable plastic
values. I do not think that Cezanne came to this most
striking fusion of drawing and painting deliberately.
It may be tempting to define the third kind of
Cezanne's unfinished aquarellesas studies or even
sketches. That would, however, be fallacious. They
are neither preliminary notes of pictorial ideas nor
hasty condensations of impressions. When Cizanne
was a young artist he improvised ; later on he gave, in
every case, the definite scaffolding of a composition.
Nevertheless, he left a number of watercolourswhich
were not intended to become complete pictures. They
consist of single, small motives, such as a part of a tree,
a pot, a chair, a piece of drapery, a few apples or pears,
even some rocks. Their most striking feature is that
the rhythmical and harmonious factor predominates

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Cezanne'sWatercolourTechnique
over the attempt to imitate natural objects. I would
almost term them poetic abbreviations discovered in
small objects in nature, similar to those that a lyric
sometimes reveals by means of the extraordinary combination of a few words.
From about the year 1885, when the artist turned
more vigorously towards watercolours and developed
his own very particular manner, his technique did not
change very much until his death in 19o6.
After a general preparation with the pencil, he
operated with light coloured touches and colour strokes,
which he put separately one beside the other ; then he
covered them over in order to obtain more intense and
more differentiated tones.
C6zanne wished to secure these particular characteristics of the aquarelle,the ground shining through the
colours, and the light reflected from the white ground
of the paper. Therefore he produced deeper tones by
several layers of transparent paint, every one of which
shows its precise contours. So skilfully did Cezanne
repeat this practice that he achieved depth of transparent
colour never reached before, and succeeded in producing
a very delicate gradation from the dark to the brighter
tones. I know of no case in which Cezanne used a
real " wash," modifying a single colour from a hardly
visible tinge into intensity. He reserved a special
nuance of colour for every nuance of darkness. In this
respect Cezanne's watercolours are at the extreme
opposite to Turner's.
Cezanne painted with exact movements of his hand,
making the beginning and end of his strokes clearly
visible, but generally without participating in the final
effect. It consists of delicate curved pencil lines,
irregular hatches, bundles of strokes, forming dark
bands of different breadth. They served C6zanne for
the beginning of the coloured execution of watercolours. He followed them up with the brush, intensifying and transferring them into coloured values. He
doubled or tripled the touches, deepened and enlarged
the half-tints, until a phantastic creation of coloured
darks came into existence out of which single objects
emerged. Autonomous harmonies were developed
binding objects together. The pictorial and not the
objective significance was the leading principle.
The sharply accentuated darks approach the objects
from the surrounding space and often prove to belong
to things situated on a plane behind the brightlycoloured object. They are knitted together, regardless
of their plastic value and meaning, into mysterious,
written characters upon a flat surface. When dark
objects are shown in front of a light background, the
darks flicker like flames, waver up and down, changing
in colour. Throughout the dark masses a rhythmic
current runs from body to body, from zone to zone,
embracing masses and space alike.
From a complex vision of such darkly coloured bands
Ctzanne's watercolours actually originate. The dark
bands were maintained during the whole working
process as a harmonious and rhythmic basis of the
composition.
From what kind of an artistic conception did this
technical process emanate ? The first supposition is,

in Cezanne's own words: " Peindre ce n'est pas copier

servilement: c'est saisir une harmonie entre des rapports

nombreux." The second: this harmony has to be

established exclusively by colours.

Strong harmonies of colours seemed to Cezanne to

exist in the darks, where different colours were blended
together. Only through the dissolution of darks into
such colours, as e.g., purple, dark green or dark blue,
did it become possible to harmonise the local reds,
greens and blues of a motif contrasting with each other,
the latter being represented as " consequences " of the
dark colours. Therefore : to establish a reliable basis
for a picture, aiming at a general harmony and unity,
Cezanne had first to build up a scaffolding of dark
colours, then he had to create sequences of continuous
chromatic scales from the darks to the lights
" upwards." The transformation of darks into strictly
distinguishable colours and the acceptance of dark
harmonies as basis for the whole picture, guarantee
Cezanne the creation of "a harmony parallel with
nature " which was, in his opinion, the essence of art.
From the historical point of view Cezanne's watercolour technique appears most puzzling. It is strange
that a man who worked under the influence of Camille
Pissarro, who had his own impressionistic period,
conceded the decisive place to the darks.
The antagonism has been recognised but has not led
to, any notion of Cezanne's historical " situation."
Cezanne, from the stylistic point of view, belongs
more to the Venetian school of the sixteenth century
than to any group of nineteenth century painters. He
is also akin to Delacroix, who in his turn leads back to
Rubens and further back to Venice. All those painters
painted " out of the darkness." Cezanne had in common
with these artists the fundamental factor of technique,
and with him painting reverted to an old tradition.
Only in producing the darks by means of opposite and
complementary colours, Cezanne is indebted to impressionist painters. He extended their method of colour
division, which they used for the representation of
light, to the darks and composed every colour with
nuances of harmonious contrasts.
In the year 1905 Maurice Denis, describing an exhibition of Cezanne's watercolours, said that they were

"
fortement Ntabliespar des contrastesvifs sur des prdparations
lavies au bleu de prusse." Maurice Denis had noticed a

very characteristic feature of Cezanne's colouring : the

blue-basis. For the blues are not only dominating in
Cezanne's aquarelles, but blue is made the " bed of
painting," to quote an expression ascribed to Titian;
it is used as the material wherein the other colours are
" embedded."
It is scarcely necessary to remark that Cezanne's blue
is not only one colour. Cezanne used four different
blues on the palette and increased their number by
mixing them with green, red or ochre.
When he chose blue as his colouristic basis, he was
following the example of Pissarro who gave his pictures
a general tone of bright blue. Cezanne, however, transformed this idea of a homogeneous atmospheric unity
into a method of composition ; instead of a pale greyish
blue he used the most intense shade.
Simultaneously he returned from the impressionistic
technique to an old tradition. He prepared his watercolours by the " blue-painting," giving them a kind of
monochrome foundation. So the blue in his pictures
accomplished the same function as the under-painting of
the Old Masters, which was to give the picture as much
unity as possible and to simplify the pictorial process.
Blue, from the lightest to the deepest tints, is Cezanne's

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Cezanne'sWatercolourTechnique
medium, his pictorial equivalent for darks, just as, in
earlier periods of painting, it had been brown or greyblack. In both cases it is a means to an end-and
often, the blue tinges, which we still see on the unfinished
aquarelles,are only the preparations intended to be
over-painted according to the requirement of the
painting. In the completely finished watercolours we
find no outstanding blues, but a general deep blue
" sound " running through the colouristic composition.
There is a corresponding general factor on the
light-side of Cezanne's palette, the ochres, changing
from yellowish to brown and reddish. These ochres
provide a kind of basis contrasted with the blue foundation. As they blend easily with red, blue and green,
they are chosen by Cezanne for the subdued transitions
forming the approaches of strong colours to each other.
Used throughout the whole picture they guarantee a
second, a softer, colour unity to the composition.

ANCIENT
AT

BRONZES

IN

To sum up: CUzanne began his watercolours by

developing a system of blue rhythms and harmonies to
which he tried to give the greatest possible extension,
and he added a system of ochres, filling up the distant
harmonies with intermediate tones. From these two
systems of blues and ochres he proceeded to the different
local tones needed for the reproduction of individual
objects, with the aim of inserting the highest local
colours, exactly balanced, between the blue-tinted and
the ochre-tinted spheres.
Local colours are the most striking ones and a painter
begins with these because they are the most accessible
to his observation. They could not be directly observed
by Cezanne as harmonious concords, but had to be
created as a result of the harmonies previously
established. That is why precisely the most intense
colour accents are often not given in the unfinished
watercolours.

THE

ROYAL

PALACE

BY EVA L. R. MEYEROWITZ

BENIN

N 1897 the Vice-Consul General Mr.

Phillips, together with six other British
Government officials, two traders, interpreters and two hundred and fifteen
carriers, left Sapele, a small port on the
Nigerian coast, to pay a semi-official visit to the
King of Benin. On their way to Benin-City they
were ambushed by Bini warriors and, with the
exception of two Europeans, all were killed. Eight
days later the news of this disaster reached London
and a punitive expedition was immediately ordered ;
forty-six days after the massacre the city of Benin
was conquered and totally destroyed.1
The only loot of any value among the ruins of
Benin were the bronzes and ivory carvings found in
the Royal Palace and in the houses of the nobles;
and apart from those which were taken as souvenirs
to England, the great bulk of them found their way
into the hands of Lagos dealers who auctioned the
bronzes as " scrap metal " and the beautifully carved
ivory tusks as " damaged ivory."
Professor von Luschan, the famous German ethnologist, upon hearing this, immediately cabled to
Lagos and was able to secure the larger part of this
booty for the German Museums.2 He was the first
to realise the outstanding value of the finds and
describes the best bronzes, after having examined
many of them, as technically perfect, the casts so
good " that neither Benvenuto Cellini himself nor
anybody before or after him, up to the present day,
could possibly improve upon them."3
1Commander R. H. S. BACON : Benin the City of Blood, London
[1897].
2 According to F. v. LUSCHAN: Die Altertuemer
vonBenin, p. 12, 13,
there are about 2,400oobronzes and ivory carvings, etc., in European
collections, of which were then (in I919), 1,250 in German museums,
280 in the British Museum and 227 in the Pitt-Rivers Museum.
Vienna has a good collection of 167 pieces and Leiden of 98 pieces.
The rest is in smaller collections scattered all over the world.
: Die Altertuemer
vonBenin, Berlin [I919], p. I5.
s F. v. LUSCHAN

It seemed incredible to the astonished world, that

a people so " savage " and " primitive " in their
way of life could be responsible for the creation of
so highly developed an art.
It is therefore not surprising that O. M. Dalton
and C. H. (later Sir Hercules) Read4 came to the
conclusion that, although there probably had been
an indigenous knowledge of brass-casting, the Bini
learnt most of it subsequently from the Portuguese
who had discovered Benin in 1472 and who about
thirty years later established trading stations and
missions. But the historical traditions of Benin,
which I am inclined to believe, tell us otherwise; for
according to these, bronze and brass-casting was
introduced into Benin by King Oguola who reigned
towards the end of the thirteenth century and who,
tired of ordering the bronze work required at his
court from Ife,5 asked for a metal worker to be sent to
him in order to establish this craft in his own country.
The King of Ife sent him Ighe-igha, a great artist
and great teacher, who is believed to have left many
designs to his students. He was deified after his
death and is worshipped to this day by the brasssmiths in the quarter of the royal brass founders in
Benin City.6
The destruction of Benin left the Bini completely
bereft of all works of art which they once had
created, bearing testimony to their great past. The
large heads, ancestral portraits, on altars and shrines
of the nobility, as one sees them to day, are pitiful ;
40. M. DALTON and C. H. READ : Antiquitiesfrom Benin in the
British Museum,London [1899], p. I9.
6Benin was originally colonised from Ife, situated to the northwest of it, and remained a vassal state, politically and culturally
dependant for many centuries.
6 The fact that Portuguese fathers, traders, etc., are depicted on
some of the plaques and that, in many instances, bronze imported
from Portugal was used, is no proof whatsoever for the theory which
credits the Portuguese with having taught the Bini this craft.
SAlready before 1897 these ancestor " portraits " were not cast
any more but carved and covered with sheet brass.

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