TRANSCRIPTION
Audio Description Script
View of the Domaine St. Joseph, Paul Cézanne, 1887
LIGHT BIRDS IN WOODS AMBIENCE...
The French artist Paul Cézanne lived much of his life in the south of France, in the town of Aix en Provence. He painted many landscapes of the area, including this painting titled View of the Domaine St. Joseph. It’s an oil painting about two feet high and three feet wide.The word domaine is French for a mission and his subject is a small old Jesuit mission tucked into a lush hillside of trees. We are looking at the mission and hillside from a distance, across a valley. Above the mission, the gentle slope of the hill it sits on curves down to the right.
SINGLE SMALL MISSION BELL BEGINS TO RING IN DISTANCE
The hill is called Colline des Pauvres, in French, the hill of the poor, probably the population served by the mission. Cézanne’s son said that he painted it in 1887, so this painting was done long before the 1913 Armory show. And in fact Cezanne had died in 1906. But the show organizers knew that Cézanne was highly respected by younger artists who considered him an established master. Styles of art including Cubism and Impressionism openly acknowledged his influence. In fact, the artist Henri Matisse once called Cézanne quote “the father of us all.”
The View of the Domaine St. Joseph reveals many of the reasons for Cézanne’s influence. There’s a cluster of small buildings in the center of the distant hillside. Two tall buildings, tan in color, face us with small blue rectangles representing windows. Behind them you can see edges of other mission buildings.
And behind all of them and to the left is the church of the mission, with a suggestion of a steeple. But only a suggestion. Cézanne was not interested in painting perfectly realistic views of his subjects. He challenged the long held painterly convention of realism, or the illusion of realism. He discovered that colors and forms in themselves had meaning and could create dynamic interactions. In this painting, the buildings are sketchily painted, incomplete in their form, but we know they are buildings. And we can tell the hillside surrounding the mission is thick with nature. But he does not paint realistic trees. Instead he uses small parallel brush strokes with many colors to build up the impression of lush woodland. Most of the painting’s surface is a mix of short strokes of shades of green, shades of brown, ochre or mustard yellow, reddish brown, even spots of blue, and muted purple. And in some places he has deliberately let the off white canvas peek through, becoming an element of the landscape. He has reduced the hillside to basic elements of color and form.
Cézanne’s reputation in the United States had preceded him and the Metropolitan Museum of Art bought this painting out of the Armory show. It was the first work by Cézanne to enter an American museum collection. For American artists that was quite a moment, because it signaled acceptance of new movements in art and it encouraged them to experiment in their own work.
Audio Description Script
View of the Domaine St. Joseph, Paul Cézanne, 1887
LIGHT BIRDS IN WOODS AMBIENCE...
The French artist Paul Cézanne lived much of his life in the south of France, in the town of Aix en Provence. He painted many landscapes of the area, including this painting titled View of the Domaine St. Joseph. It’s an oil painting about two feet high and three feet wide.The word domaine is French for a mission and his subject is a small old Jesuit mission tucked into a lush hillside of trees. We are looking at the mission and hillside from a distance, across a valley. Above the mission, the gentle slope of the hill it sits on curves down to the right.
SINGLE SMALL MISSION BELL BEGINS TO RING IN DISTANCE
The hill is called Colline des Pauvres, in French, the hill of the poor, probably the population served by the mission. Cézanne’s son said that he painted it in 1887, so this painting was done long before the 1913 Armory show. And in fact Cezanne had died in 1906. But the show organizers knew that Cézanne was highly respected by younger artists who considered him an established master. Styles of art including Cubism and Impressionism openly acknowledged his influence. In fact, the artist Henri Matisse once called Cézanne quote “the father of us all.”
The View of the Domaine St. Joseph reveals many of the reasons for Cézanne’s influence. There’s a cluster of small buildings in the center of the distant hillside. Two tall buildings, tan in color, face us with small blue rectangles representing windows. Behind them you can see edges of other mission buildings.
And behind all of them and to the left is the church of the mission, with a suggestion of a steeple. But only a suggestion. Cézanne was not interested in painting perfectly realistic views of his subjects. He challenged the long held painterly convention of realism, or the illusion of realism. He discovered that colors and forms in themselves had meaning and could create dynamic interactions. In this painting, the buildings are sketchily painted, incomplete in their form, but we know they are buildings. And we can tell the hillside surrounding the mission is thick with nature. But he does not paint realistic trees. Instead he uses small parallel brush strokes with many colors to build up the impression of lush woodland. Most of the painting’s surface is a mix of short strokes of shades of green, shades of brown, ochre or mustard yellow, reddish brown, even spots of blue, and muted purple. And in some places he has deliberately let the off white canvas peek through, becoming an element of the landscape. He has reduced the hillside to basic elements of color and form.
Cézanne’s reputation in the United States had preceded him and the Metropolitan Museum of Art bought this painting out of the Armory show. It was the first work by Cézanne to enter an American museum collection. For American artists that was quite a moment, because it signaled acceptance of new movements in art and it encouraged them to experiment in their own work.