How Cezanne Mixed His Paints: Palette and Color Study of 'Still Life With Fruit Bowl' (1879-80)

Paul Cezanne was an incredibly sophisticated painter who, as a Post-Impressionist combined new methods with old traditions. Join me as I explore one of his amazing still-life paintings by mixing his palette and painting a color study.

Cezanne was an incredibly precise painter. He paid intense attention to how he mixed and placed his colors, and was meticulous in how he used brushwork to create space and form. And yet all this becomes invisible in the overall visual impact of his beautiful paintings.

In this video we will see how Cezanne combined the new Impressionist palette with elements of the traditional Old Master palette, and how he created his own distinctive space within his paintings using negative space, lost/hidden edges and color based contrast.

A particular element I focus on is how he eschewed the use of mixing complementaries to make blacks and grays, harking back to classical painting by using black and white instead. This produces duller colors than two-color mixing, but such was his mastery of color placement that he gets his colors to glow.

Every time I analyze a Cezanne painting I learn more and more about how this great artist worked, and I encourage you to do the same!

The studies that I refer to by the National Gallery Technical Bulletin Team can be found here:

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/up... (for the analysis of the 'Mountain in Provence' painting)

and here:

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/up... (for a wide ranging analysis of Cezanne's palette and technique)

The original of the painting can be found here: https://www.moma.org/collection/works...

I hope you enjoy this and please don't forget to like, subscribe and leave any questions or observations in the Comments - I always read and try to respond to these.