Paul and Helen, Mountain and Sea

Considering Cézanne and Frankenthaler as landscape, actions, and re-actions meld Impressionism with Abstract Expressionism

The Impressionist approach to landscape painting was shaped by several innovations, both technical and stylistic. Their focus on creating the impression of being in a particular place during a specific season, and even a specific time of day, was governed by a desire to capture the essence of the experience. They observed the effects of light and attempted to reproduce them using pigment. Which was quite a challenge.

‘Bibémus Quarry’ (1895) by Paul Cézanne, ‘Le Bonheur de Vivre’ (1906) by Henri Matisse, and ‘Nature Abhors a Vacuum’ (1973) by Helen Frankenthaler [view license 1 and 2 and source 3 ] *

Painting directly from nature in the open air — en plein air — became a concept important to Impressionist painters such as Claude Monet, who worked quickly to capture the effects of light in a landscape. Although Paul Cézanne was introduced to such techniques by his mentor Camille Pissaro, he preferred to sketch at the site but then work carefully in his studio where some landscapes took years to complete. It has been said that Cézanne applied ‘the analytical brush’ as he became particularly obsessed with how form and colour could translate the depth and solidity of a three-dimensional landscape onto the uniformly flat surface of a canvas.

Paul Cézanne was born in 1839 the son of a wealthy banker and became childhood…