Cézanne had a small obsession with elementary shapes - spheres, cones, cylinders and cubes. His paintings can often be broken down into these simple shapes that, in concert, form more complex forms like a body. It makes sense then, that Cézanne found himself attracted to the Bibémus Quarry, and even rented a small, one roomed house there for a time. The quarry, long out of use by the time he arrived, was filled with regular, cubic clefts and blocks. Unlike other quarries, Bibémus, while in use, did not use large superstructures in the quarrying process. Stones were removed with smaller tools and most work was done essentially by hand. The result was a place in which the human presence in the form of buildings and scaffolding was seldom seen. John Rewald describes the odd landscape here:
“It is a vast field of seemingly accidental forms as if come prehistoric giant, constructing a fantastic playground, had piled up cubes and dug holes and then abandoned them without leaving a hint of his intricate plan. And nature has since spread a carpet of plants over the turrets, the square blocks, the sharp edges, the clefts, the caves, the tunnels and arches, thus reclaiming the site that had been wrested from her.” (Rewald, 244)
This semi-untouched quality must have appealed to Cézanne’s love of the land. Thus, Cézanne spent several years in the late 1890’s painting in the confines of the old Bibémus Quarry. As we’ve seen before, the shape of the rocks wasn’t the only thing that attracted Cézanne to the quarry, the stone’s ochre color, enhanced by bright, open light, also caught his eye. In his paintings, the rock at the quarry is molten shade of orange that stands out brilliantly against the greenery of the nature that is “reclaiming the site that had been wrested from her.” The quarry eventually lost his interest by 1902 when he moved into his new studio at Les Lauves, but Cézanne certainly enjoyed stealing into and playing on the giant’s “playground” even if just for a short while.
Cézanne, Paul. Bibemus Quarry, c. 1895, oil on canvas. Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany.