Went to the Cezanne exhibit at the National Gallery yesterday. Overall I’d say “eh…” He’s not really my cup of tea. His stuff shows a great use of gesture and he was very concerned with color as well. Unfortunately, gesture doesn’t mean much to me and I don’t really care for his use of color either. Overall I think his paintings are rather flat. It’s as though he didn’t pay much attention to light which seems odd since he was predominantly a landscape painter. Many of his paintings have the same brightness range across the frame, there is no change from light to dark. This kills any potential interest I might of had. Not surprisingly, I consider Renoir my favorite of the impressionists because of his acute sense of light.
I think the better exhibition is over in the east wing. They have a collection of “Small French Paintings” that are very very nice. Plus it isn’t a mob scene like the Cezanne show is. One of my favorites is in there, by Tissot I believe called “Hide and Seek”, Check it out
There’s also one by Villard entitled “Woman in a Red Dress” that is quite interesting in person.
There’s a bunch of others too, go see them!
Isaac
One reply on “Cezanne and a better exhibition”
I’ve loved Hide and Seek since I saw it there for the first time. When it was hung at the end of a hall, it almost looked like the window cast light into the museum. š (Of course, it was probably lit to do that.)