Bathers by Paul Cezanne, 1894-1905
(Picture: )Brian Sewell, this paper’s brilliant former critic, observed about the last big Cezanne exhibition in 1996, also at the Tate, that “people think Cezanne is important because they’re told he’s important.” He thought we should look at the pictures and make up our own minds.
It was good advice then and it’s good now. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the veneration in which Cezanne was held – Picasso called him the “father” who protected those who followed him; Manet called him “the greatest of us all”; in his last years his retreat near Aix-en-Provence was a pilgrimage site for a succession of younger artists. Many of the greats, such as Matisse, owned his work.
