landscapes

Respectively: Le Jardin de Maubuisson, Pointoise by Paul Cézanne (1877) and Potager, arbres en fleurs, Pointoise by Camille Pisarro (1877)

Weekly I'm painting a subject in Academy. Last week our subject was "Landscape". At first, I was disappointed because this subject didn't interest me. How to treat a landscape in a modern way? neither worked out as a picture, nor too abstract as most painters do nowadays? First I wanted to find a landscape that could inspire me to paint in atelier. My ideas slipped away to all this fine artist of preceding century, catching in a subtle manner the essentials of colours and forms. My eyes fell on a review with the nice landscapes of Vincent Van Gogh with his well-known way of mixing colours and appearing full paintbrushes that give movement to all his paintings. Delightful, but I don't want to imitate him.
Actually runs a famous exposition in Paris with 60 paintings of Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro (1865-1885). Imagined by the granddaughter of Camille, conservator of the Modern Museum of Modern Art in New York, in homage to the friendship between both painters and at the same time to commemorate the centenary of the death of Cézanne. They met in Paris in 1861 during their artist education. After ten years of fighting and deceptions, their friendship drives them to collaborate. Paul Cézanne joins Camille Pissarro in Pontoise, and for almost twenty years they are painting side by side in nature or in the atelier. Its the products of this collaboration you can visit till 28 May 2006 in Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The style of both is so different: large, tumultuous paintbrushes for Cézanne and subtle light touches for Pissarro. I'll certainly visit the museum; meanwhile, I'm no longer rabid against the subject.