Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Sheep Hill, Joy and Salvation


A 9x12 oil on panel painted yesterday at a favorite spot at the top of Sheep Hill in Williamstown, MA.

Jack Lindsay quotes a letter from Cezanne to Bernard, in which the painter ends with the words: "Paint. There lies salvation."

Earlier in his biography, Lindsay, when writing about Pissarro's influence on Cezanne, says, "... there was an aspect of impressionism, which we may say developed decisively in 1869 in the work of Monet and Renoir at La Grenouilliere, that struck home with [Cezanne]--it's effect of a world of actual and potential joy.  G. Geffroy wrote that impressionism was born from an 'exaltation' of the senses.  The conviction of a quite new form of free and yet precise comprehension of nature, of a release into light and infinitely rich and subtle colour, had a liberating quality: the final ratification of that impulse to deny and defy the world of drab and restrictive conventions, and to get away untramelled into the free tracks of nature..."

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