Paul Cézanne and Pierre-Auguste Renoir currently have an extraordinary two-man exhibition at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Tokyo.  The Musée de l’Orangerie and the Musée de’Orsay have together put on loan fifty-two paintings by the artists for the exhibition currently at the museum. 

Cézanne and Renoir might seem to be an odd pair for an exhibit together.  The organizers would suggest that painters are both impressionists.  They point out that they both exhibited in the First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874.  Renoir is rightly taken to be an early impressionist.  He is thought especially to capture his subjects and objects in fleeting moments.

But one might wonder whether one ought to place Cézanne among the impressionists.   Is he not more generally thought to be a cubist or at least to be a proto-cubist?  He is known for composing his work with elements that are geometric, and his influence on Georges Braque and Pablo Picaso is undeniable. 

What, then, might Cézanne and Renoir have in common?  I wish to argue that they are both early cubists or, if you prefer, proto-cubists.  Admittedly, terms ending with the suffix “-ist” or “-ism” are notoriously difficult to define.  They too often refer to a rather nebulous range of phenomena.  But I shall use “cubist” merely as a convenient marker for a point that I wish to make. 

I take my marker to be not entirely disengaged from the place that Cézanne and Renoir occupy in art history, however.  We shall see that these artists compose their works with what we generally recognize to be cubist techniques.  Cézanne does so on what one might deem a larger scale though not nearly on the same scale as Picaso or Braque.  Renoir does so on a smaller scale all but unrivaled as far as I know. 

We might perhaps begin with a remark, quoted in the gallery, from the nineteenth century art critic Gustave Geffory.   “Nature,” Geffory said, “joyful and peaceful in Renoir’s work, is solemn and eternal in Cézanne’s.”  I wish to look more closely at the concepts of nature that Geffory observed.  What philosophies underly their approaches to painting and what aesthetic foundations might they have?  

The key to understanding their painterly aesthetics and their implicit philosophies lies, I think, in their brushwork.  Cézanne uses broad, almost blotchy, brushstrokes.  He surely is well known for this technique.  Consider an obvious example from the exhibit.  It is Still life with Soup Tureen (1877): 

Cézanne is famous for his painting of apples.  So let us take a closer look of his portrayal of the apples in this painting: 

In this enlarged photograph one can see more easily the broad, bold, strokes of Cézanne’s brush. They are most apparent in the yellows but also in the reds and oranges.  The basket, too, is composed with similar strokes of light browns of various shades. 

Renoir, on the other hand, uses extremely fine brushstrokes.  They are almost embroidery-like.  We seldom notice his brushstrokes because the eye so easily blends them together almost as if they were the tiny dots of a pointillist painting.  Perhaps the most striking and obvious example from the exhibit is Strawberries (1905):   

If we look closely at them, we can see that the individual strawberries are composed of very thin lines.  Consider the strawberries in the left foreground: 

Renoir is using narrow brushstrokes of white, yellow, and light and dark reds to create the surface of these strawberries.  For their stems he uses in the same technique with white, yellow, and light and dark green.  Please bear in mind, too, that the actual brushstrokes are even more fine because these photographs are magnified.  They have been called feathery or wispy.

But perhaps we ought to compare not apples with strawberries but apples with apples.  Consider Renoir’s Apples and Pears (1895):   

The apple in the foreground is clearly composed of very fine brushstrokes.  The yellows are especially fine though some reds have broader strokes.  But even the broader red strokes hardly compete in size with those of Cézanne.  They are much thinner and longer. 

All the apples and the pears, too, are composed almost entirely with the same fine lines not to mention the cloth enveloping the bowl:

We can see, then, that Cézanne and Renoir are not so much impressionists as they are cubists.  Cubism for a philosopher rests its compositions on the discontinuous and static nature of our impressions.  Perhaps the paradigm example is Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 by Marcel Duchamp.  Duchamp attempts to capture our impressions of human motion as a static sequence. 

Cézanne, I would argue, is a cubist of broad, bold, brushstrokes.  He shows the way to paintings composed of larger geometric elements, such as those of Duchamp or Picaso or Braque.  Renoir is a cubist of the finest and most delicate of brushstrokes.   He perhaps opens a door for painters such as Cy Twombly, who with very thin lines creates abstract compositions. 

A still life, however, obviously does not attempt to capture motion.  Its subject is still.  But with a still life an artist can capture the nature of an object.  A cubist still life can do so with a multitude of discontinuous brushstrokes.  Or so Cézanne and Renoir would appear to do. 

One can also find a similar contrast between Cézanne and Renoir in their portraits.  Consider the Portrait of Madame Cézanne (1885-1895): 

Cézanne is obviously using his customary broad brushstrokes in this portrait.  The background, the clothing, even the face are all composed with the blotchy strokes. 

Perhaps the brushstrokes are more obvious in Madame Cézanne’s face.  The ears, the checks, the eyes, the nose, and the mouth are similarly constructed with the same technique.  Cézanne even manages to give his subject a dour expression despite the broad strokes. 

Now consider a portrait by Renoir, Bather with Long Hair (1895): 

Without a closeup photograph, we cannot even make out the brushwork.  But if, for example, we zoom in on the right arm, we can see again the very fine brushstrokes that represent the skin of the bather. 

We can also see the difference in their brushwork if we compare how Cézanne and Renoir represent the hair of their subjects.  Renoir would appear to create a single thin stroke for each strand of hair.  He adjusts the color to create effects of light and depth:

Cézanne does not hesitate to use his blotchy, broad, strokes even for hair.  He, too, uses color to create effects of depth and light: 

We can now see how, I think, Cézanne and Renoir portray for us the conceptual or the perceptual essences of persons and things.  The one presents us with eternal and somber verités, and the other presents joyful and temporal verités, as Geffory suggests.  Cézanne explores intelligible essences in his portraits and still lifes.  He does not attempt to create a perceptual illusion.  Renoir explores sensible essences in his paintings.  He creates illusions that approach everyday reality.    

We can, indeed, see that the persons in their portraits embody attitudes reflecting these philosophical perspectives.  Madame Cézanne is very contemplative and introspective.  She would appear to be thinking of something less than agreeable.  I did notice that visitors to the gallery do not linger long before her portrait with her disconcerting visage. 

Renoir portrays persons extrospective, one might perhaps say, and perceptive.  His subjects almost always are engaged in some activity with others.  The bather is clearly looking at someone who approaches her as she covers herself with a towel.  Not to mention many other paintings, such as Yvonne and Christine Lerolle at the Piano (1897): 

These reflections are generalities, of course.  Both Cézanne and Renoir use other techniques in their paintings though usually in a subsidiary manner.  But Renoir does experiment with brushwork similar to Cézanne’s on occasion.  Consider, for example, a floral painting in the exhibit, Roses (1890): 

I did not, however, see in this exhibit Cézanne experimenting with Renoir’s techniques. 

We can also see the weakness of -isms and -ists.  One might say that both Cézanne and Renoir have impressionist as well as cubist aspects in their paintings.  Renoir obviously captures the customary fleeting moment in many painting of this exhibit.  But he also exhibits another mark of an impressionist.  This aspect of his work builds on the cubism present in his paintings.  He permits the eye to finish his composition by blending together his fine brushstrokes. 

Cézanne does not resemble Renoir in capturing the moment.  At least, not very obviously.  But he does resemble Renoir in allowing the observer to complete a composition.  He does not allow for the eye to complete his composition, however.  With his broad brushwork he enables the intellect to pull together the elements of the subjects and objects in his paintings. 

Cézanne declared that he will astound Paris with an apple!  Renoir might well have declared that he, too, will astound Paris but with a strawberry! 

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The exhibition at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum closes on September 7th.  It will then open at the Seoul Art Center in Seoul, South Korea, on September 20th and remain there until January 25th, 2026.  It has previously been shown in Milan, Italy, in Martigny, Switzerland, and in Hong Kong.

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Paul Schollmeier is Barrick Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

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