Cezanne's Use of Perspective

Abstract

Students of Cezanne's use of space in his paintings have very often seen in his powerful and original handling, a break with the traditional means of organization, and have suggested that an important element in Cezanne's conception of pictorial space was to be found in his rejection of the conventional rules of perspective.1 Yet if a number of Cezanne's statements about his objectives in art were to be taken at face value, it would appear that he regarded himself, not as a radical innovator casting away traditional forms, but rather as an artist who felt that his contemporaries were losing certain important qualities to be found in the works of the great masters of the past. Though Impressionism had greately enriched Cezanne's perception of nature, he felt that it lacked the solidity of traditional art. He desired, as he put it, “to make something that would endure out of Impressionism, like the art of the museums;”2 and “to do Poussin over after nature.”3