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The Influence of Cézanne on Adrien Hébert
by Jean-René Ostiguy*
Pages 1 | 2
| 3 | 4
This, to our knowledge, is the sum of Hébert's
paintings that seem to be inspired by Cézanne's form and technique.
Other paintings from the same period may be discovered, but probably
they win not significantly modify our understanding of Hébert's
art.
When he painted himself beside a joyful follower of the god Pan,
Hébert was not yet known as the "poet of the Port of Montreal," (19)
nor as the author of the major compositions The Market, Jacques Cartier
Square and Skaters (fig. 17). He had not yet renounced
the better part of Cézanne's legacy. (20) Although Adrien Hébert
profited from the lessons of Cézanne for only a few years, the fact
remains that in the eyes of a small group of Montreal artists and intellectuals,
from his exhibition at the Cercle universitaire in 1921 until his second
exhibition at the Bibliothèque Saint-Sulpice in 1923, the artist's
work represented a first step toward modernism.
In 1942, shortly after painting Skaters, Adrien
Hébert wrote in the magazine Culture: "Paul Cézanne
is justly regarded as the pioneer of modern painting. He painted excellent
portraits, very beautiful landscapes...but failed miserably in the major
decorative composition that shows female figures in a landscape. He never
painted academy figures from life, and one of his biographers claims that
he worked from prints." (21) This belated declaration cannot be commented
on at great length here, but two factors should perhaps be mentioned. The
first has to do with the so-called classical tendency of André Derain
and Othon Firesz in 1908. This is amplified by comments on Cézanne's
work by Louis Vauxcelles and Maurice Denis. The Salons d'Automne of 1904
and 1907 and the Bernheim-Jeune exhibition of 1905 had reawakened interest
in Cézanne. The two critics regarded the Master of Aix as a neo-classicist
and hoped that other artists would follow his example. (22) The second factor,
which concerns Hébert particularly, is the attention that such
critics as Claude Roger Marx and Waldemar George gave to André Favory
during the 1920s, for having worked on large-scale decorative compositions
on themes of human life. Shortly after this classical era, people spoke
freely of "great themes." (23) These were examples that a great admirer of
Puvis de Chavannes from Montreal could not ignore.
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