Amsterdam Watercolour: Two Sheds in Autumn

At the end of last October, my partner and I departed Amsterdam and returned to York. The cause was my commencing a PhD in literature at the University of York. While there were possibilities for undertaking doctoral research at a university which would have enabled us to continue living in Amsterdam – including an excellent opportunity with the University of Antwerp – we ultimately decided that York presented the best scenario for study. Preparations for the move occupied much of late October; there was the fact of the move itself; and then followed the process of finding and inhabiting an apartment in York while also developing a working habit at the University.

That serves as a loose explanation for my lack of posts between last September and mid-March; but as much as I was preoccupied with other things, I simply fell out of the habit of posting. More, during September and October, I began and wrote significant portions and passages for articles which were intended for the site, but never finished. Aside from no longer possessing a surfeit of time, and aside from the diminishing of a regular article-writing habit, the existence of these unfinished pieces served to further pervert the end of publication. As those articles which I had begun became less and less relevant, the inclination was to consider how their material could be repurposed – rather than focusing on what else I ought to write. What had been written became a barrier to further work. The situation in Ukraine and Crimea compelled several pieces last month, and marked my return to posting.

In the last few weeks before we left Amsterdam, I painted a small number of paintings comprising views from the rear balcony of our apartment, in the ‘Oud-Zuid’ of the city. The paintings are in watercolour and ink. Some of their views will be visible in earlier collections of photographs posted on this site; or else via my Instagram account. This first painting looks down upon two sheds, and contains all of the relevant fallen leaves and foliage.

Zola’s House at Médan (or Le Château de Médan), by Cézanne

In a piece on Cézanne’s Banks of the Marne, published on this site several weeks ago, I mentioned and briefly considered, by way of comparison, the painting Zola’s House at Médan. The painting is just as often referred to as Le Château de Médan; it was painted between 1879 and 1881; and is now part of the Burrell Collection in Glasgow.

Over the last week I have been reading through a book on Cézanne by Hajo Düchting, published by Taschen, entitled on the front cover simply Cézanne; with the title page expanding upon this via the provision of a subtitle, 1839-1906, Nature into Art. The book makes particular mention of Zola’s House at Médan; and includes a lengthy quotation by Gauguin which I thought was worth republishing here.

Gauguin is recorded as the painting’s first owner, purchasing it from the Parisian art supplier and art dealer Julien François Tanguy. Over the course of years, Tanguy established in his shop quite a collection of Impressionist paintings, owing to the fact that, where money was lacking, he accepted paintings in exchange for paints. He was called Père by his artists, and sold, or attempted to sell, works by Monet, Sisley, Seurat and Van Gogh alongside Cézanne and Gauguin. Van Gogh painted him three times, the latter two paintings increasingly experimental, Japanese-inspired portraits.

Gauguin’s remarks provide us with his own sense of the interplay of colours in Cézanne’s painting. They continue with a second-hand account of an occurrence which took place with Cézanne mid-paint. This account is humorous in its evocation of the professorial passer-by, it provides a nice depiction of Cézanne’s character, and it is also a suggestive shot of a perhaps not atypical contemporary response to Cézanne’s work. Here is Gauguin:

Cézanne is painting a shimmering landscape against an ultramarine background, with intense shades of green and ochre gleaming like silk. The trees are stood in a row like tin soldiers, and through the tangle of branches you can make out his friend Zola’s house. Thanks to the yellow reflections on the whitewashed walls, the vermilion window shutters take on an orange tone. A crisp Veronese green convey the sumptuous leafage in the garden, and the sobre, contrasting shade of bluish nettles in the foreground renders the simple poem even more sonorous.

A presumptuous passer-by takes a shocked glance at what seems, in his eyes, to be a dilettante’s wretched daubing, and asks Cézanne in a professorial voice, with a smile,

‘Trying your hand at painting?’

‘Yes – but I’m no expert!’

‘I can see that. Look here, I was once a pupil of Corot. If you don’t mind, I’ll just add a few well-placed strokes and set the whole thing right. What count are the valeurs, and the valeurs alone.’

And sure enough, the vandal adds a few strokes of paint to the shimmering picture, utterly unabashed. The oriental silk of this symphony of colour is smothered in dirty greys. Cézanne exclaims: ‘Monsieur, you have an enviable talent. No doubt when you plant a portrait you put shiny highlights on the tip of the nose just as you would on the bars of a chair.’

Cézanne picks up his palette once more and scratches off the mess he has made. Silence reigns for a moment. Then Cézanne lets fly a tremendous fart, and, gazing evenly at the man, declares: ‘That’s better.’