Piquer, Plaquer: Cézanne, Pissarro, and Palette-Knife Painting

The painting appears as an early contribution to an artistic dialogue between Pissarro and Paul Cézanne. It is commonly suggested that Cézanne learned plein air painting by working with Pissarro, and that Cézanne's gradual move from dark and expressionistic works to paintings that could be called “impressionist” happened as a result of their shared work, or from Pissarro's tutelage. Impressionist painting was central to the methodological turn taken in the field of art history from the formalism prevalent up to the 1970s to the social history of art, and then beyond to feminism and gender studies. The plein air paintings that both Pissarro and Cézanne undertook in the early 1870s reveal their responses to the epistemological challenge Impressionism posed. One sees impressionist stippling (the “piquer” from the quote), such as the small dabbing strokes for leaves, even alongside “plaquer”-type (Cézanne-type) wider marks.