on of Degas that "le peintre en general est bete," and
most people seem to think that Cezanne was no exception to the rule.
Before agreeing, I should want to know what precisely they understood by
the word "bete." Cezanne was silly certainly, but he was not stupid: he
was limited and absurd, but not dull; his opinions for the most part
were conventional, but his intelligence was not common; and his
character was as obviously that of a man of genius as the most ardent
hero-worshipper could desire.

Cezanne was a great character. It is a mistake to suppose that great
characters are always agreeable ones. Few people, I imagine, found
Cezanne agreeable; yet painters, one would suppose, were eager to meet
him that they might hear what he had to say about painting. Cezanne's
ideas on painting are not like ideas at all: they are like sensations;
they have the force of sensations. They seem to give the sense of what
was in his mind by a method more direct than the ordinary intellectual
one. His meaning reaches us, not in a series of pellets, but in a block.
These sayings of his remind one oddly of his art; and some of his
comments on life are hardly less forcible and to the point. This, for
instance, provoked by Zola's "L'Oeuvre," is something more than a
professional opinion:

On ne peut pas exiger d'un homme qui ne sait pas, qu'il dise des
choses raisonnables sur l'art de peindre; mais, N. de D---- et
Cezanne se mit a taper comme un sourd sur sa table--comment peut-il
oser dire qu'un peintre se tue parce qu'il a fait un mauvais
tableau? Quand un tableau n'est pas realise, on le f... au feu, et
on en recommence un autre!

_Realise_--Cezanne's incessant complaint that "he was unable to realize"
has been taken by many stupid people to imply that Cezanne was conscious
in himself of some peculiar and slightly humiliating inhibition from
which his fellows were free; and even M. Vollard has thought it
necessary to be continually apologizing for and explaining away the
phrase, which, moreover, he never does explain. Yet the explanation is
as simple as can be. Genius of the very highest order never, probably,
succeeds in completely realizing its conceptions, because its
conceptions are unrealizable. When Cezanne envied M. Bouguereau his
power of realization he was perfectly sincere and perfectly sensible. A
Bouguereau can realize completely the little nasty things that are in
his mind: if a Cezanne, a Shakes