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Cézanne Reconsidered
Fig. 1.
Nature morte de pêches et poires (Still life with Peaches and Pears) by Paul Cezanne (1839–1906), c. 1885–1887. Oil on canvas, 14 ⅝ by 17 ¾ inches.
Private collection; photograph courtesy of Bridgeman Images and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
“Others abide our question,” Matthew Arnold said of Shakespeare, “thou art free!”
1 Arnold meant that the Bard, in his sublime universality, soared above those petty reckonings that critics apply to all other cultural figures. Which makes one wonder whether Paul Cézanne abides our question. One suspects that he would if we ever asked it. But we do not. For we haven’t really thought much about Cézanne in over a hundred years. Perhaps we have not even looked at him very much. In place of such probing inspection stands the calcified residue of what once was a living aesthetic response. Even worse, that response is apt to be borrowed from others long dead, men like Clive Bell who, in 1913, c