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Course: Special topics in art history > Unit 2
Lesson 1: The conservator's eye- The conservator's eye: Marble statue of a wounded warrior
- The conservator's eye: Taddeo Gaddi, Saint Julian
- The conservator's eye: a stained glass Adoration of the Magi
- The conservator’s eye: Rembrandt's Aristotle with a Bust of Homer
- The conservator's eye: Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory
- Anselm Kiefer, Bohemia Lies by the Sea
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The conservator's eye: Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory
Explore the artistry of Paul Cézanne with a deep dive into his painting 'Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory.' Learn about his unique painting process, from choosing the canvas size to the final brush strokes. Discover how Cézanne's use of color, light, and form creates a captivating portrait that keeps viewers intrigued. Paul Cézanne, Madame Cézanne, in the Conservatory, 1891, oil on canvas, 92.1 x 73 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Speakers: Jim Coddington and Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
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- The painting looks beautiful, I could see why we need to know the details of the painting.(5 votes)
Video transcript
(tasteful piano music) - (Steven) I am on the second floor of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art with Jim Coddington, the longtime Chief Conservator
at the Museum of Modern Art. We're standing in front of Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory, this extraordinary painting of his wife. - [Jim] When I, as a
conservator, look at a painting, I'm looking both at what
we can see and cannot see, trying to understand the
artist's studio practice. Cézanne would have started with a selection of his stretcher size. A stretcher is a wooden construction around which the canvas is stretched. These stretchers were
commercially available. They had actually
developed a system of sizes that could be ordered by an artist. The next step would be to apply a sizing. - [Steven] So the textile
itself is too smooth. - [Jim] It's too absorbent, so whatever layer you put on next, which is called the ground layer, might get absorbed into the canvas. - [Steven] And in Cézanne's case, often that ground is visible. - [Jim] We do see the ground layer, not only where it's not been painted, but where he has integrated
it into the composition. - [Steven] Now there are choices with the color of the ground. Here Cézanne has chosen
quite a luminous color. - [Jim] The first really
important aesthetic decision the artist makes is what
color is the ground, what color am I going to be painting on? If you choose a darker,
middle tone ground, you paint away from the middle tone and the darks you paint against
that middle tone ground. Whereas if you're starting
with a white ground, then if you paint very thinly, the luminosity of the
ground will shine through. - [Steven] And we see that especially in the very thinly painted
area in the lower-right corner, where we can see Madame Cézanne's dress barely covers that ground. - [Jim] The next step for
him would be to outline the forms of the composition
with a graphite pencil. We can see the application of the graphite directly on the ground layer. - [Steven] The lines are so loose. It's clear that he was not trying to define the edges of the fingers. He's really trying to
block out the composition. - [Jim] It's very loosely
done, as is the next layer, which are very thin
washes of a blue paint. He's not trying to outline
and paint within the forms. He's refining the composition as he goes along, layer by layer. He then goes to other colors and begins to further
block in the composition in the right side of the picture, where one sees some very
thin applications of green, and then he also begins to mix
some of the paints together. Some of the blues have a little bit of white mixed into them. He is just circling the problem that he has of the composition,
and as he continues on, the paint becomes thicker and more opaque. - [Steven] He's taking
colors that seem to belong to one area, and he draws
them in to other areas. For example, the glove
that's closest to us has that beautiful ochre in it, that you see it in the
area that surrounds her. It's as if he's finding applications as he has that paint on his brush. - [Jim] He is constructing form through fairly conventional devices. That ochre-ish form,
which is slightly forward, is a warm tonality. The other glove is cool. Warm tends to come forward,
cool tends to go back. He is suggesting that one arm is catching a little bit of light and the other arm is in shadow. - [Steven] And the sense
of opacity of the paint is clearest as we rise to the shoulders and the areas around the face. - [Jim] The amount of labor
that goes into the various parts of the painting is quite diverse here. The thing that holds the
viewer's eye the most, which is her face, he has developed the composition most fully there. He continues to rework the face to get a sense of modeling and form, again using these
techniques of warm and cool, but also light and dark. - [Steven] My eye moves fairly quickly over the more summary
areas of the painting, and like a magnet, is drawn to that face. - [Jim] He is constantly adjusting, even the tilt of the head, you can see some working
around the edges of her head. - [Steven] Although it
is the most resolved part of the painting, there
is still a certain degree of play because of some
choices that he's made, especially around the eyes. They're so dense with that blue. But also because he's left a little bit of the ground visible, and Cézanne, through that open ground,
through the visible graphite, gives us access to his process. - [Jim] And certainly points him towards subsequent painters
who, in the 20th century, were very actively making
their process evident. - [Steven] Those eyes are
looking directly at us, and yet, they're not entirely available. - [Jim] I have to confess
that I was really moved by the fact that this
is somebody who he knows better than anybody in the world, and he is still trying to see and understand who this person
is through the vocabulary that he uniquely has, the way he paints. Just around her shoulders,
you can see that he's playing a little bit of the warmer colored paint that separates her in space and gives that head a
little more dynamism. - [Steven] But that's a pure abstraction. This is nothing that exists
in nature before him. It's a reminder that the dynamic is not simply between what
he sees and what is seen, but also between the
artist and the canvas. - [Jim] For all of the presence of process and the evidence of how
this painting was painted, we're still captured by the unknowable and yet still fascinating
stare of Madame Cézanne here. It seems like it's not finished, but indeed it is very finished. It's as if he is beginning with nature but must finish with painting. (tasteful piano music)