Cezanne

Apples and Oranges

2nd Grade Lesson Plan

Concentration Game:  When the children make a match, explain the picture.  (Concentration game cards are in packet, also included at the end of this section)

Banker:  Cézanne's father was a successful banker.  He wanted his only son, Paul to do something where he could also make a lot of money.  So he urged him to also become a  banker or to be a lawyer.  Cézanne attended law school for a period, but spent more time on his art evening class, then work for his law classes.  He always tried being a banker, but hated that also.  Finally his father promised to give him a small monthly allowance to live on so that he could paint.  When his father died, the family was left with quite a bit of money, so he didn't have to worry about supporting himself.

France:  Paul was born in Aix en Provence in southern France in 1839.  He loved trudging through the countryside and playing in the river around Aiz.  These early years when the only time when he was really happy in life.  He always loved that area of France because of the warm, soothing sun.  Most of his life he went back and  forth between Aix and Paris, the capital.  Paul stayed in France his entire life except when he went to Switzerland with his wife and son for a trip.

The Card Player:  Cézanne painted a scene of card players a number of times.  He started out with five players in his early pictures, and eventually ended up with this final painting with only two players.  The card players are shown in strict profile and the supporting shapes: table, chair, bottle, and wall are arranged absolutely parallel to the surface of the picture.  Players are joined by their angled arms that hold the cards.  Strong vertical lines of their bodies are repeated in the chair back, table legs, and bottle.  About thirty years ago, this painting along with seven others was stolen from a museum in Aix.  The French government was so concerned about the loss that they issued a stamp of this painting, the most valuable.  A few months later, a ransom was paid and the paintings were returned.

Still Life: common, everyday subjects.  Cézanne was the master of still life.  He painted over 200 still life paintings, mostly of fruit.  When he was painting a portrait he required his subject to sit still for hours and hours.  Obviously this was difficult for  people.  He once said to a man, "You must sit like an apple!  Does an apple move?  The painter worked so slowly and had so much trouble finding models willing to endure lengthy sessions that he enjoyed painting still life's.  He created harmonious scenes out of a variety of objects and shapes -fruits, vegetables, pottery, glass, cloth, etc.  He would arrange these objects in a variety of ways, looking for the best combination of color and form.
Father of Modern Art: Cézanne first started out painting like the impressionists--light, quick strokes, capturing the impression of a scene.  This style didn't suit him though.  He worked very slowly and carefully.  He didn't use a lot of details but  concentrated on colors and shapes, cubes, cones and sphere.

Color and Shape:  Cézanne was always concentrating on color in his paintings.  He spent a great deal of time building blocks of color.  He would fit his brush strokes in place like bricks so  to create a solid form.  He modeled with color rather than light.  For example, an apple is red and shaped like a sphere.  However, Cézanne noticed that there were a number in intensities of the red in the apple and also, as you turned the apple different ways, it did not always look round.  He tried to capture these different colors and shapes.

Hortense And Paul:  His wife was named Hortense, they had one child., Paul.  Hortense did not get along well with Cézanne's mother or his older sister.  They thought Hortense spent too much of Cézanne's money.  His mother and sister did not want Hortense to come to the family home in Aix, so she and her son usually lived in Paris.  Young Paul attended school there, in later years, Hortense had an apartment in Aix.  Cézanne never lost his affection to his only child Paul.  Although the painter lived apart from his on much of the time, he made frequent sketches of the boy.  Hortense patiently posed for her husband many different times.

Thunderstorm:  In the later years of his life he was somewhat isolated from many of his associates.  Many of the art critics hated his paintings.  They said he couldn't draw.  He became withdrawn, bitter and very unhappy.  Whenever he painted pictures of himself (over thirty self portraits) his eyes were always serious, almost angry and his mouth was turned down into a frown.  He had a bad temper and when he was unhappy with a picture, he would throw it out of the studio into the trees and leave them in a field where he had been painting, or cut them up and send them out as garbage.  One day, while painting he got caught in a thunderstorm and was soaking wet when he finally arrived home.  He caught a cold, which turned into pneumonia, and died six days later.  1906 at the age of 67.

If you can't get the packet...find pictures of the above underlined things and print out two copies to make a concentration game.