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POSTIMPRESSIONISM
PAUL CEZANNE:
Excerpts from the Letters
DISCUSSING PAINTING
To Charles Camoin, Aix, 28 January 1902 (# 148, p. 2I8)
I have little to tell you; indeed one says more and perhaps better things about painting when facing the motif than when discussing purely speculative theories -- in which, as often as not, one loses oneself.
CONTACT WITH NATURE
To Charles Camoin, Aix, 22 February 1903 (# 160, p. 228)
But I must work. -- All things, particularly in art, are theory developed and applied in contact with nature.
To Charles Camoin, Aix, I3 September 1903 (# 163, _p. 230)
Couture used to say to his pupils: "Keep good company, that is: Go to the Louvre. But after having seen the great masters who respose there, we must hasten out and by contact with nature revive in us the instincts and sensations of art that dwell within us.
ON CCNCEPTION AND TECHNIQUE
To Louis Aurenche, Aix, 25 1904
In your letter you speak of my realization in art..I think that every day I am attaining it more, although with some difficulty. For if the strong experience of nature -- and assuredly I have it-is the necessary basis for all conception of art on which rests the grandeur and beauty of all future work, the knowledge of the means of expressing our emotion is no less essential, and is only to be acquired through very long experience.
The approbation of others is a stimulus of which, however, one must sometimes be wary. The feeling of one's own strength renders one modest.
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