Cezanne has accurately used his blending capabilities in this classic 1866 drawing to communicate. We see a man (his father) seated on an oversized armchair in a room with a fairly dark background reading a newspaper in a relaxed mood. The room’s dark background and sombre mood have been achieved by the use of a thick impasto which was most likely derived from thick brushstrokes (Levey, 2014). The man seems to be seated on the very edge of the armchair and tilted as if he is about to fall just in front of the image viewer. This angled view of the man who is also seemingly in the corner of the room prompts questions in the viewer’s mind as the tension in the room is palpable.
Variations in the thickness of brushstrokes have played a crucial role in the enhancement of the painting’s visual impression. Evidently, Cezanne simultaneously appreciated the role that light plays in drawing, a concept that he had learned from the impressionists, and the purpose of broad brushstrokes in pinpointing pictorial details, a concept that pre-impressionists held onto strongly. We can tell, for instance, that the mood in this room is tense because of the variations in the thickness of the painting used on different objects in the drawing. If the notion of impressionists was solely held and the use of thick brushstrokes avoided, the room’s dark background would probably have been missing and the viewer could not possibly have read any mood in the image presented. Likewise, if only thick brushstrokes were used and the concept of lighting ignored, it would have been difficult to detect that there is tension in this room. Thus, both properties played a crucial role in adding this detail to the viewer.
A careful glance at this painting reveals that Cezanne either ignored or slightly played around with perspective. There seems to be a very little artistic touch on this painting because, at a glance, the drawing is exactly what would impress any ordinary eye or what a camera would capture. Many of the drawings of Cezanne’s contemporaries gave much attention to perspective. Objects that were far away in the background in an artist’s observation would appear smaller and more diminished in their painting as compared to those in the foreground that would be much large in size. This got to show that the artist had done some work on it. The case is different with Cezanne’s drawing as it looks more or less like a photograph. This lack of perspective that was associated with impressionists in the drawing seems to have ignored some pictorial details that would perhaps have enhanced the picture’s communication.
Cezanne’s painting was indeed a hybrid of the concepts of impressionists and pre-impressionists. His excellent variation of brushstrokes has added details to his rather ‘flat’ photograph that would have otherwise been less meaningful. He owes both the impressionists and pre-impressionists as he has used the former’s concept of light physics and the latter’s use of thick brushstrokes in this painting, which have given it a modern artistic touch. There is very little that one can see at a glance, yet so much to decipher from the Artist’s Father Reading L’Evenement by Cezanne.
