Cezanne: The House of Dr Gachet

One of the things I love about Cezanne is that he was an outlier among his painter peer group. His father was a fucking rich banker! His father the rich banker encouraged his son to go to law school, so Cezanne went to law school and took drawing lessons on the side. But then his bad influence friend, the writer Emile Zola, persuaded him to move to Paris and commit himself to being an artist. Man, you have to be really careful about who your children hang out with. Seriously, people!

Cezanne's father was pissed, but eventually he grudgingly learned to live with his son's weirdo alternative lifestyle. And then he financially supported his deadbeat son and made sure he'd have a massive inheritance. What a great, bitterly disappointed dad. Also, I wonder if all Cezanne's artist friends spent their lives mooching off this trust fund baby.

My friend Peter sent me this lovely image of Cezanne's oil painting, The House of Dr Gachet in Auvers. A beautiful painting. Subdued. Vaguely brooding. Is anything in the painting a straight line? All the houses and trees and chimneys seem to lean at different angles. And note the few splashes of yellow along the right hand side that echo the splashes of ochre (?) along the road and then on the wall of the house on the far left. It all comes together wonderfully and feels so meaningful somehow.

I really tried to recreate this painting in acrylics, but I just couldn't do it. I'm glad I tried, but the whole thing ended up looking like a version of the original painted by a blind stroke victim. I'm going to blame this failure on the difference between acrylics and oils. A lot of Cezanne's oil effects I just couldn't figure out how to mimic in acrylics. I mean, why does his road look so alive while mine looks dull and dead? I think it might have something to do with the layering of many different related colours in the original, but I haven't learned how to do that in acrylics so far. 

And, of course, all the bits of the painting that I took for loose, casual and easy-going were probably carefully planned and executed. In fact I remember reading somewhere that Cezanne took forever to apply each brush stroke because he considered each one critical. I took the exact opposite approach in my painting. I'm not sure that I'd consider any of these brush strokes critical. 

And as you can see from even a cursory glance, none of my bright colours are anywhere near to matching the purposefully dull originals. 

So in conclusion, a failed painting. But a good learning experience. My first attempt at creating a sense of depth. And I truly did enjoy painting the clouds and the leaves on the tree. I hope that comes across in the final painting.