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copying Cézanne & Sickert

Long before Lascaux painters were copying other painters. It's not just an excellent way to learn the craft, it's one of the best ways to try and see the world through another person's eyes. These particular paintings are two of my favorite works in Yale's museums, and they each have much to teach an artist who has spent the last 40 years learning to paint precise descriptions of the natural world.

Cézanne's House of Dr. Gachet, Yale University Art Gallery

I have always found the Cézanne piece to be thrilling precisely because it seems so loose and spontaneous, while being both a careful record of how the artist felt about that place and time, and a superb piece of visual craftsmanship. The painting is no slap-dash piece of plein aire choreography; it is built of layer upon layer of paint and glaze. In spite of the bravura surface brushwork, Cézanne often worked very slowly, and could sometimes work on a picture sporadically over a period of months before finally signing the work. For example, there are many layers of scumble and glaze in the yellow tree on the right, but superficially it looks as if it was dashed off in a few minutes.

The main subject is the house of Dr. Paul Gachet in Auvers-sur-Oise. Gachet was a physician and early patron of the Impressionists who occasionally treated the local artists (Renoir, Cézanne, Courbet, Van Gogh). Gachet was a particular friend and defender of Cézanne's when he had few admirers. Cézanne painted this Auvers scene at least twice. My copy is of the version in the Yale University Art Gallery.

Sickert's L'Ospedale Civile, Venice, Yale Center for British Art

Walter Sickert's piece in the Yale Center for British Art first grabbed me because (like the Cézanne) it played so loose with visual fact while capturing the emotional impact of the L'Ospedale fascade in the Campo Santa Maria Formosa in Venice. The principal subject is the facade of the Scuola Grande San Marco, now part of the large municipal hospital complex a few minutes walk east of the more famous Piazza San Marco.

Sickert's painting looks as if it could have been done in two sittings, with bold direct brushwork and largely opaque paint layering. One odd thing: the color of the Scuola fasade is rendered in a burnt sienna orange, but the actual fascade is in various pale shades of marble. Sickert seems to have painted the scene at sunset, rendering the building in an exaggerated warm light, with long shadow bands across the empty campo.

I visited Venice a few years ago, and tried to find Sickert's exact viewpoint (below). As you can see from my photograph, Sickert's scene is remarkably unchanged in 100 years. Sickert bent the exact geometry of viewpoint to suit his composition, but aside from the facade color the scene remains instantly recognizable. Mind-boggling to an American, where anything older than 50 years is "historic," and streets can become barely recognizable within 20 years.

Sickert's L'Ospedale viewpoint, as seen in 2005.